Ladysmith | Page 5

foreigners were allowed to
remain on sufferance. Now unhappily the place is almost deserted, and
Burns himself would hardly find a welcome there. In the Free State
every resident may be commandeered, and I believe forty-eight hours
counts as "residence." You see the advantage of an extended franchise.
The penalty for escape is confiscation of property, and five years'
imprisonment or £500 fine, if caught. The few British who remained
have had all their horses, carts, and supplies taken. Some are set to
serve the ambulance; a few will be sent to watch Basutoland; but most
of them have abandoned their property and risked the escape to Natal,
slipping down the railway under bales or built up in the luggage vans
like nuns in a brick wall. In one case the Boers commandeered three
wool trucks on the frontier. Those trucks were shunted on to a siding
for the night, and in the morning the wool looked strangely shrunk

somehow. Yet it was not wool that had been taken out and smuggled
through by the next train. For Scot helps Scot, and it is Scots who work
the railway. It pays to be a Scot out here. I have only met one Irishman,
and he was unhappy.
But for the grotesque side of refugee unhappiness one should see the
native train which comes down every night from Newcastle way, and
disappears towards Maritzburg and safety. Native workers of every
kind--servants, labourers, miners--are throwing up their places and
rushing towards the sea. The few who can speak English say, "Too
plenty bom-bom!" as sufficient explanation of their panic. The
Government has now fitted the open trucks with cross-seats and
side-bars for their convenience, and so, hardly visible in the darkness,
the black crowd rolls up to the platform. Instantly black hands with
pinkish palms are thrust through all the bars, as in a monkey-house.
Black heads jabber and click with excitement. White teeth suddenly
appear from nowhere. It is for bread and tin-meats they clamour, and
they are willing to pay. But a loaf costs a shilling. Everything costs a
shilling here, unless it costs half-a-crown; and Natal grows fat on war.
A shilling for a bit of bread! What is the good of Christianity? So the
dusky hands are withdrawn, and the poor Zulu with untutored maw
goes starving on. But if any still doubt our primitive ancestry, let them
hear that Zulu's outcries of pain, or watch the fortunate man who has
really got a loaf, and gripping it with both hands, gnaws it in his corner,
turning his suspicious eyes to right and left with fear.
The air is full of wild rumours. A boy riding over Laing's Nek saw
1,000 armed Boers feeding their horses on Manning's farm. The Boers
have been seen at a Dutch settlement this side Van Reenen's. Yesterday
a section of the Gordons on their arrival were sent up to look at them in
an armoured train. It is thought that war will be proclaimed to-day.
That has been thought every day for a fortnight past, and the land
buzzes with lies which may at any moment be true.
Half the Manchesters have just marched in to trumpet and drum. When
I think of those ragged camps of peasants just over the border the pomp
and circumstance seem all on one side.

_Friday, October 13, 1899._
So it has begun at last, for good or evil. Here we think it began
yesterday, just at the very moment when Sir George White arrived.
Late at night scouts brought news of masses of Boers crossing the
Tintwa Pass, and going into laager with their waggons only fifteen
miles away to the west. The men stood to their arms, and long before
light we were marching steadily forward along the Van Reenen road.
First came the Liverpools, then the three batteries of Field Artillery
with a mountain battery, then the Devons and the Gordons. The
Manchesters acted as rear-guard, and the Dublin Fusiliers, who were
hurried down from Dundee by train, came late, and then were hurried
back again. The column took all its stores and forage for five days in a
train of waggons (horses, mules, and oxen) about two miles long. When
day broke we saw the great mountains on the Basuto border, gleaming
with snow like the Alps. Far in front the cavalry--the 5th Lancers and
19th Hussars with the Natal Volunteers--were sweeping over the
patches of plain and struggling up the hills in search of that reported
laager. But not a Boer of it was to be seen. At nine o'clock, having
advanced eight or nine miles, the whole column took up a strong
position, with all its baggage and train in faultless order, and went to
sleep. About one we began to return,