Story of the War in South Africa | Page 3

mercantile and gregarious of races,
whose artists have won some of their chiefest triumphs in depicting the
joyous episodes of crowded social life, have, through calling and
environment, become lovers of solitude, austere, self-dependent,
disposed rather to repel than to seek their kind.
The same conditions, unfavourable to the aggregation of people into
towns or villages, have interfered with the development of lines of
travel, roads and cross-roads, which not only facilitate but define
movement; and as the face of the country, readily traversable in all
directions, does not compel roads to take a particular direction to avoid
obstacles, it has come {p.009} to pass that the seat of war within the
territory of the two Boer states has, like the ocean, and for the same
reasons, few strategic points either natural or artificial.
The determining natural military features in South Africa are the
seaports, upon possession of which depends Great Britain's landing her
forces, and the mountain ranges, the passes of which, as in all such
regions, are of the utmost strategic value. It has been said that the
Boers' original plan of campaign was to force the British out of Natal,
thus closing access by Durban from the sea, and at the same time to
seize the pass back of Cape Town known as Hex River. If successful,
the eastern flank of the Boer frontier would have been secured against
British landing by the occupation of Durban, while advance from Cape
Town, against the other extremity, would have involved a front attack
upon a strong position in a difficult mountain defile.

These movements, accurate in conception, were probably in any case
too developed for the Boer numbers, and were definitively foiled by the
British grip upon Ladysmith and Kimberley. Advance was too
hazardous, leaving in {p.010} the rear such forces, unchecked, upon the
flank of the lines of communication.
To these two extremes, or flanks, of the Boer frontier, correspond on
the British side the ports of Cape Town and Durban, which may be said
to mark the western and eastern limits of the field of military operations
in the war. They are the chief seaports on the South African coast,
which by nature is singularly deficient in good and safe anchorages.
The advantages of these two, artificially improved, and combined with
the relatively open and productive region immediately behind them,
have made them the starting-points of the principal railroad lines by
which, through the sea, the interior is linked to the outer world.
The general direction of these roads is determined, as always, by the
principal objects of traffic or other interests. Thus the line from Cape
Town, ascending by a winding course through the mountains in the rear,
pushes its way north to Kimberley, where are the great diamond fields,
and thence on, by way of Mafeking, to the territory of the British South
African Company--now known as {p.011} Rhodesia. This lies north of
the Transvaal, and, like it, is separated from the sea by the Portuguese
dominion, having, however, by treaty a right of military way through
the latter by the port of Beira; of which right use is now being made.
In the northern part of its course, which at present ends at Buluwayo,
this road is as yet rather political than economical in its importance,
joining the British entrance at the sea to the as yet little developed
regions of the distant interior. At a point called De Aar Junction, five
hundred miles from Cape Town, a principal branch is thrown off to the
eastward to Bloemfontein, the capital of the Orange Free State, whence
it continues on to Johannesburg, the great industrial centre of the Gold
Fields, and to Pretoria, the capital of the Transvaal. A glance along this
stretch of road will show that between De Aar and Bloemfontein it
receives three tributary routes from three different points of the
sea-coast--Port Elizabeth, Port Alfred, and East London--the whole

system concentrating some sixty miles before Bloemfontein, at
Springfontein, which thus becomes a {p.012} central depot fed by four
convergent, but, in their origin, independent streams of supply; an
administrative condition always conducive to security and to
convenience. This instance also illustrates the capital
importance--especially in a military point of view--of a place where
meet several roads from the permanent base of operations, which in the
case of the British interior campaign is the sea. The fall of
Springfontein would close every avenue of supply by rail; but a blow at
any one of the four lines which concentrate there does not necessarily
affect the others. Holding across-roads in fact exemplifies the homely
phrase of killing two birds with one stone.
Beyond Springfontein the straightness of the line sufficiently testifies
to the easy practicability of the country it traverses. Upon this railroad
system depend the