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The cost of wood for heating purposes was a serious item, but good coal had now been found at 160 miles from Kimberley, costing 13l. per ton; another serious item of expense was the transport over natural roads only, costing from 18l. to 30l. per ton. The machinery designed by the author for this industry was described.
This would mean some twenty-seven thousand whites, together with natives, coolies, etc. about forty thousand people. The idea behind all this was to make Kimberley a garrison town, to stock it well with provisions, and afterwards to allow the Boers if they were so disposed to re-mutilate the line to their hearts' content.
The Kimberley crater is roomy enough to admit the Roman Coliseum; the bottom of the crater has not been reached, and no one can tell how far down in the bowels of the earth it goes. Originally, it was a perpendicular hole packed solidly full of blue rock or cement, and scattered through that blue mass, like raisins in a pudding, were the diamonds.
I feel personally convinced that if, during the period which immediately followed upon the relief of Kimberley and of Lady smith, Rhodes had approached Sir Alfred and frankly told him that he wanted to try his luck with the Dutch party, and to see whether his former friends and colleagues of the Afrikander Bond could not be induced to listen to reason, the High Commissioner would have been only too glad to meet him and to explain his views on the whole question.
Lord Kimberley, acting under pressure put upon him by members of the Aborigines Protection Society, instructed the Commission to consider the advisability of severing the districts of Lydenburg and Zoutpansberg, and also a strip of territory bordering on Zululand and Swazieland from the Transvaal, so as to place the inhabitants of the first two districts out of danger of maltreatment by the Boers, and to interpose a buffer between Zulus, and Swazies, and Boer aggression, and vice versa.
The interest of Kimberley, however, soon paled and waned as the all-engrossing events of the Uitlander rebellion in Johannesburg rapidly succeeded each other. One sultry evening our host brought us news of tangible trouble on the Rand: some ladies who were about to leave for that locality had received wires to defer their departure.
Hundreds of shells dropped in its vicinity, while the millionaire went round the city in a cart, to all outward seeming as little concerned as the most penurious of men. Some weeks before a grazier who had fallen into the hands of the Boers had been assured that it was Rhodes they wanted not Kimberley.
Among the American engineers who rallied round Gardner Williams was George Labram. When the Boers invested the town they had the great advantage of superiority in weight of metal. Thanks to Britain's lack of preparedness, Kimberley only had a few seven pounders, while the Boers had "Long Toms" that hurled hundred pounders.
If the Siege of Kimberley brought out the weak side of his character, his egotism and impatience, his lack of power to adapt himself even temporarily to unaccustomed conditions, it will be remembered that these defects were inherent and that his marvellous success in life had accentuated them.
Before it closed, Kimberley and Ladysmith had been relieved and Cronje forced to surrender. After the affair at Magersfontein, December 11, Methuen and Cronje remained confronting one another. Shelling by guns of long range was carried on intermittingly by both parties, and there were small affairs from time to time, but nothing on a large scale occurred.
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