United States or Azerbaijan ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
To attack the fortified entrenchments in these parts, where we had only just been taking the offensive, causing the enemy to be on his guard, would not have been advisable. I therefore decided to make a feint attack on Belfast. One night we moved with all the burghers who had horses, about 15 carts, waggons, and other vehicles, guns and pom-pom, to a high "bult," near the "Pannetjes."
A few weeks nay, days ago these would have been a burgher commando; now we knew they were our friends, and presently we met Major Weston Jarvis and his dust-begrimed squadron of the Rhodesian Regiment, followed by a large number of transport waggons, driven cattle, and donkeys.
We exchanged kind farewells with our new friend, and not without many a regret at leaving Uphill commenced our march. We all knew that it would be a toilsome one and not free from danger, but my father had determined, that as he was moving he would move far west, where the curse of slavery was unknown. The waggons I have mentioned were of a stronger build than those before described.
Express trains go by in a great hurry the slow waggons gather up the warm hay and the yellow wheat, just as they did hundreds of years since. The broad-browed oxen guided by the ancient goad draw the old wooden plough over the slopes of the Downs, though the telegraph wires are in sight. You may see men sowing broadcast just as they did a thousand years ago on the broad English acres.
This accident was foreseen by almost every person who knew any thing of our plantations upon the continent of America; for the people of Virginia, who think of no produce but their tobacco, and do not raise corn enough even for their own subsistence, being, by the nature of their country, well provided with the conveniency of water conveyance, have but few wheel carriages, or beasts of burden; whereas Pennsylvania, which abounds in corn, and most other sorts of provisions, has but little water-carriage, especially in its western settlements, where its inhabitants have great numbers of carts, waggons, and horses.
The waggons became useless, too, so that the transport of bombs, shot, and so forth, could not be performed except upon the backs of mules and of horses taken from the equipages of the Court and the army. The state of the roads deprived the Duc de Luxembourg of the use of waggons and other vehicles. His army was perishing for want of grain.
In the early part of the campaign in Natal the laagers were filled with ox-waggons, and, in the absence of tents which were sadly wanted during that season of heavy rains, they stood in great stead to the burghers. The rear half of the waggons were tented with an arched roof, as all the trek-waggons are, and under these shelters the burghers lived.
But it was not to be thought of, for some of my men had been sent away with the waggons, and the others well, every one had a horse that he had taken from the English, and as these horses were in the pink of condition for rapid retreat, I thought it wiser not to call upon the burghers to attack.
The Austrians whom we saw at Paris, were in general strong heavy looking men. Their cavalry were universally admired; but the Russians and Prussians complained much of the general dilatoriness of their movements, and in particular, of the quantity of baggage waggons with which their march was encumbered.
With horror those in the city beheld their means of subsistence destroyed. Meanwhile the Zaporozhtzi, having formed a double ring of their waggons around the city, disposed themselves as in the Setch in kurens, smoked their pipes, bartered their booty for weapons, played at leapfrog and odd-and-even, and gazed at the city with deadly cold-bloodedness.
Word Of The Day