The Great Boer War | Page 5

and so to remove an
evil with which the mother country had no immediate connection. It
was as well that the thing should have been done when it was, for had
we waited till the colonies affected had governments of their own it
could never have been done by constitutional methods. With many a
grumble the good British householder drew his purse from his fob, and
he paid for what he thought to be right. If any special grace attends the
virtuous action which brings nothing but tribulation in this world, then
we may hope for it over this emancipation. We spent our money, we
ruined our West Indian colonies, and we started a disaffection in South
Africa, the end of which we have not seen. Yet if it were to be done
again we should doubtless do it. The highest morality may prove also
to be the highest wisdom when the half-told story comes to be finished.
But the details of the measure were less honourable than the principle.
It was carried out suddenly, so that the country had no time to adjust

itself to the new conditions. Three million pounds were ear-marked for
South Africa, which gives a price per slave of from sixty to seventy
pounds, a sum considerably below the current local rates. Finally, the
compensation was made payable in London, so that the farmers sold
their claims at reduced prices to middlemen. Indignation meetings were
held in every little townlet and cattle camp on the Karoo. The old
Dutch spirit was up--the spirit of the men who cut the dykes. Rebellion
was useless. But a vast untenanted land stretched to the north of them.
The nomad life was congenial to them, and in their huge ox-drawn
wagons--like those bullock-carts in which some of their old kinsmen
came to Gaul--they had vehicles and homes and forts all in one. One by
one they were loaded up, the huge teams were inspanned, the women
were seated inside, the men, with their long-barrelled guns, walked
alongside, and the great exodus was begun. Their herds and flocks
accompanied the migration, and the children helped to round them in
and drive them. One tattered little boy of ten cracked his sjambok whip
behind the bullocks. He was a small item in that singular crowd, but he
was of interest to us, for his name was Paul Stephanus Kruger.
It was a strange exodus, only comparable in modern times to the
sallying forth of the Mormons from Nauvoo upon their search for the
promised laud of Utah. The country was known and sparsely settled as
far north as the Orange River, but beyond there was a great region
which had never been penetrated save by some daring hunter or
adventurous pioneer. It chanced--if there be indeed such an element as
chance in the graver affairs of man--that a Zulu conqueror had swept
over this land and left it untenanted, save by the dwarf bushmen, the
hideous aborigines, lowest of the human race. There were fine grazing
and good soil for the emigrants. They traveled in small detached parties,
but their total numbers were considerable, from six to ten thousand
according to their historian, or nearly a quarter of the whole population
of the colony. Some of the early bands perished miserably. A large
number made a trysting-place at a high peak to the east of
Bloemfontein in what was lately the Orange Free State. One party of
the emigrants was cut off by the formidable Matabeli, a branch of the
great Zulu nation. The survivors declared war upon them, and showed
in this, their first campaign, the extraordinary ingenuity in adapting

their tactics to their adversary which has been their greatest military
characteristic. The commando which rode out to do battle with the
Matabeli numbered, it is said, a hundred and thirty-five farmers. Their
adversaries were twelve thousand spearmen. They met at the Marico
River, near Mafeking. The Boers combined the use of their horses and
of their rifles so cleverly that they slaughtered a third of their
antagonists without any loss to themselves. Their tactics were to gallop
up within range of the enemy, to fire a volley, and then to ride away
again before the spearmen could reach them. When the savages pursued
the Boers fled. When the pursuit halted the Boers halted and the rifle
fire began anew. The strategy was simple but most effective. When one
remembers how often since then our own horsemen have been pitted
against savages in all parts of the world, one deplores that ignorance of
all military traditions save our own which is characteristic of our
service.
This victory of the 'voortrekkers' cleared all the country between the
Orange River and the Limpopo, the sites of what has been known as the
Transvaal and