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"Our cornet had a telegram this afternoon," one of them said, "that we were to be specially vigilant here, and we must keep a sharp lookout at night. I don't suppose they are on this side of the river. They may be going to pull up the railway, or blow up a culvert somewhere between this and Barberton. Four men with their Kaffirs might do that, but they certainly could not damage this bridge."
There was nothing of the military in his appearance; in fact, Christian De Wet, Commandant-General of the Orange Free State in 1900, was not a whit unlike Christian De Wet, butcher of Barberton of 1879, and men who knew him in the gold-rush days of that mining town declared that he was more martial in appearance then as a licensed slayer of oxen than later as a licensed slayer of men.
'E'd 'ave been settled for life if 'e 'd took my advice! But Barberton was always inclined to be a little 'eadstrong. The widder in question 'appened to be a trifle par-say, I'll admit, also it was 'inted that one of 'er lower limbs was cork. But then, 'er money, sir 'er jools!" Mr. Brimberly raised eyes and hands and shook his head until his whiskers quivered in a very ecstasy.
I could only tell them that the veldt between Nelspruit and Barberton up to Avoca, was, so far as I had been able to discover, full of cattle and waggons belonging to farmers who now had no chance of escaping. Everybody wanted some information from the General. About half a score of burghers with bridle horses then came up.
The influx of prospectors was very considerable, the increase of the revenue of the State appeared simply colossal; and no sooner did the Boer rulers begin to realize the significance of the Barberton boom than they were confronted with the incomparably greater discoveries of the Witwatersrand. The President did not like the Uitlanders. He made no concealment of the fact.
They are also labouring among the Barolongs in the Orange Free State, in Swaziland, and at the Gold Fields at Barberton, in the Transvaal. The Scotch Presbyterians are represented by the missions of the Free Church of Scotland, and the United Presbyterian Church. These confine their labours principally to British Kaffraria and Kafirland.
Working over the blackened veld he swung round in the Barberton direction, and afterwards made a westerly drive in conjunction with small columns commanded by Walter Kitchener, Douglas, and Campbell of the Rifles, while Colville, Garnett, and Bullock co-operated from the Natal line. Again the results were disappointing when compared with the power of the instrument employed.
The period for which he was now elected proved to be one of unexpected, unexampled prosperity, furnishing him with the means of completing plans which must have seemed more or less visionary at their inception; but it was also a period of considerable trial. The development of the Barberton Goldfields was a revelation to the peasant mind of what the power of gold is.
He had advanced through a country almost as difficult as that in which Buller was engaged, and although the commandos opposing him had at first been drawn away to the south by the report that he was making for Ermelo, they returned in time to offer some resistance east of Carolina; but he entered Barberton without the discharge of a rifle. Botha had sounded the Cease Fire.
In the middle of 1887 the regular output of gold commenced, and the fields have never 'looked back' since. Johannesburg named after Mr. Johannes Rissik, the Surveyor-General of the Transvaal was soon a far greater problem than Barberton had been.
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