The Great Boer War | Page 2

for a complete
and final chronicle. By the aid, however, of the official dispatches, of
the newspapers, and of many private letters, I have done my best to
give an intelligible and accurate account of the matter. The treatment
may occasionally seem too brief but some proportion must be observed
between the battles of 1899-1900 and the skirmishes of 1901-1902.
My private informants are so numerous that it would be hardly possible,
even if it were desirable, that I should quote their names. Of the
correspondents upon whose work I have drawn for my materials, I
would acknowledge my obligations to Messrs. Burleigh, Nevinson,
Battersby, Stuart, Amery, Atkins, Baillie, Kinneir, Churchill, James,
Ralph, Barnes, Maxwell, Pearce, Hamilton, and others. Especially I
would mention the gentleman who represented the 'Standard' in the last
year of the war, whose accounts of Vlakfontein, Von Donop's Convoy,
and Tweebosch were the only reliable ones which reached the public.
Arthur Conan Doyle, Undershaw, Hindhead: September 1902.

CHAPTER 1.
THE BOER NATIONS.
Take a community of Dutchmen of the type of those who defended
themselves for fifty years against all the power of Spain at a time when
Spain was the greatest power in the world. Intermix with them a strain
of those inflexible French Huguenots who gave up home and fortune
and left their country for ever at the time of the revocation of the Edict
of Nantes. The product must obviously be one of the most rugged,
virile, unconquerable races ever seen upon earth. Take this formidable
people and train them for seven generations in constant warfare against
savage men and ferocious beasts, in circumstances under which no
weakling could survive, place them so that they acquire exceptional
skill with weapons and in horsemanship, give them a country which is
eminently suited to the tactics of the huntsman, the marksman, and the
rider. Then, finally, put a finer temper upon their military qualities by a
dour fatalistic Old Testament religion and an ardent and consuming
patriotism. Combine all these qualities and all these impulses in one
individual, and you have the modern Boer--the most formidable
antagonist who ever crossed the path of Imperial Britain. Our military
history has largely consisted in our conflicts with France, but Napoleon
and all his veterans have never treated us so roughly as these
hard-bitten farmers with their ancient theology and their inconveniently
modern rifles.
Look at the map of South Africa, and there, in the very centre of the
British possessions, like the stone in a peach, lies the great stretch of
the two republics, a mighty domain for so small a people. How came
they there? Who are these Teutonic folk who have burrowed so deeply
into Africa? It is a twice-told tale, and yet it must be told once again if
this story is to have even the most superficial of introductions. No one
can know or appreciate the Boer who does not know his past, for he is
what his past has made him.
It was about the time when Oliver Cromwell was at his zenith--in 1652,
to be pedantically accurate--that the Dutch made their first lodgment at

the Cape of Good Hope. The Portuguese had been there before them,
but, repelled by the evil weather, and lured forwards by rumours of
gold, they had passed the true seat of empire and had voyaged further
to settle along the eastern coast. Some gold there was, but not much,
and the Portuguese settlements have never been sources of wealth to
the mother country, and never will be until the day when Great Britain
signs her huge cheque for Delagoa Bay. The coast upon which they
settled reeked with malaria. A hundred miles of poisonous marsh
separated it from the healthy inland plateau. For centuries these
pioneers of South African colonisation strove to obtain some further
footing, but save along the courses of the rivers they made little
progress. Fierce natives and an enervating climate barred their way.
But it was different with the Dutch. That very rudeness of climate
which had so impressed the Portuguese adventurer was the source of
their success. Cold and poverty and storm are the nurses of the qualities
which make for empire. It is the men from the bleak and barren lands
who master the children of the light and the heat. And so the Dutchmen
at the Cape prospered and grew stronger in that robust climate. They
did not penetrate far inland, for they were few in number and all they
wanted was to be found close at hand. But they built themselves houses,
and they supplied the Dutch East India Company with food and water,
gradually budding off little townlets, Wynberg, Stellenbosch, and
pushing their settlements up the long slopes which lead to that great
central plateau which extends for fifteen