Ladysmith | Page 3

refugee train came
up to the frontier and transhipped its miserable crowd. Fugitives of
every nation have been hurrying to the railway in hopes of escape. The
stations far down into Natal are constantly surrounded with patient
groups, waiting, waiting for an empty truck. Hindoos from Bombay
and Madras with their golden nose-rings and brilliant silks sit day and
night waiting side by side with coal-black Kaffirs in their blankets, or
"blue-blooded" Zulus who refuse to hide much of their deep chocolate
skin, showing a kind of purple bloom like a plum. The patient
indifference with which these savages will sit unmoved through any
fortune and let time run over them, is almost like the solemn calm of
nature's own laws. The whites are restless and probably suffer more.

Many were in extreme misery. Three or four young children died on the
journey. One poor woman became a mother in the train just after the
frontier, and died, leaving the baby alive. At the border I found many
English and Scotch families, who had driven across the veldt from
Ermelo, surrendering all their possessions. All spoke of the good
treatment the Boers had shown them on the journey, even when the
waggon had outspanned for the night close to the Boer camp. I came
down to Newcastle with a Caithness stonemason and his family. They
had lost house, home, and livelihood. They had even abandoned their
horses and waggon on the veldt. The woman regretted her piano, but
what really touched her most was that she had to wash her baby in cold
water at the lavatory basin, and he had always been accustomed to
warm. So we stand on the perilous edge and suffer variously.
CHAPTER II
AT THE BRITISH FRONT
LADYSMITH, NATAL, _Wednesday, October 11, 1899_.
Ladysmith breathes freely to-day, but a week ago she seemed likely to
become another Lucknow. Of line battalions only the Liverpools were
here, besides two batteries of field artillery, some of the 18th Hussars,
and the 5th Lancers. If Kruger or Joubert had then allowed the Boers
encamped on the Free State border to have their own way, no one can
say what might have happened. Our force would have been
outnumbered at least four to one, and probably more. In event of
disaster the Boers would have seized an immense quantity of military
stores accumulated in the camp, and at the railway station. What is
worse, they would have isolated the still smaller force lately thrown
forward to Dundee, so as to break the strong defensive position of the
Biggarsberg, which cuts off the north of Natal, and can only be
traversed by three difficult passes. Dundee was just as much threatened
from the east frontier beyond the Buffalo River, where the Transvaal
Boers of the Utrecht and Vryheid district have been mustered in strong
force for nearly a fortnight now. With our two advanced posts "lapped
up" (the phrase is a little musty here), our stores lost, and our reputation

among the Dutch and native populations entirely ruined, the campaign
would have begun badly.
For the Boers it was a fine strategic opportunity, and they were
perfectly aware of that. But "the Old Man," as they affectionately call
the President, had his own prudent reasons for refusing it. "Let the
enemy fire first," he says, like the famous Frenchman, and so far he has
been able to hold the most ardent of the encamped burghers in check.
"If he should not be able!" we kept saying. We still say it morning and
evening, but the pinch of the danger is passed. Last Thursday night the
1st Devons and the 19th Hussars began to arrive and the crisis ended.
Yesterday before daybreak half the Gordons came. We have now a
mountain battery and three batteries of field artillery, the 19th Hussars
(the 18th having gone forward to Dundee), besides the 5th Lancers (the
"Irish Lancers"), who are in faultless condition, and a considerable
mixed force of the Natal Volunteers. Of these last, the Carbineers are
perhaps the best, and generally serve as scouts towards the Free State
frontier. But all have good repute as horsemen, marksmen, and guides,
and at present they are the force which the Boers fear most. They are
split up into several detachments--the Border Mounted Rifles, the Natal
Mounted Rifles (from Durban), the Imperial Light Horse, the Natal
Police, and the Umvoti Mounted Rifles, who are chiefly Dutch. Then of
infantry there are the Natal Royal Rifles (only about 150 strong), the
Durban Light Infantry, and the Natal Field Artillery. As far as I can
estimate, the total Natal Volunteer force will not exceed 2,000, but they
are well armed, are accustomed to the Boer method of warfare, and will
be watched with interest. Unhappily, many of them here