Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: May 7, 2025
During supper, while I was relating my experiences, the Pessimist interjected the remark that I was a liar. After a more or less drawn battle, MacLean and Niekerk restored peace, so that both supper and narrative were finished without further interruption.
Our party consisted of about two hundred men, composed as follows: the President, with his bodyguard of thirty men, under Commandant H. Van Niekerk, the Government, Commandant Van de Merwe, of Vredefort, my staff and myself. Whilst we were occupied there in cutting the telegraph wires, the enemy fired a few rounds on us, at a distance of five hundred or six hundred paces.
But Niekerk, who had been unable to understand the words which gave rise to the disturbance, was confirmed in his ideas as to the essential insanity of the English. Our little patrol tent stood about ten yards from the tail of Niekerk's wagon. One morning at daybreak a big black rhinoceros stood grunting and sniffing in the space between.
Later investigation has shown that these buildings were in many cases carefully planned and built fortifications. At Niekerk, for instance, nine or ten hills are fortified on concentric walls thirty to fifty feet in number, with a place for the village at the top. The buildings are forts, miniature citadels, and also workshops and cattle kraals.
The next meeting I held on the 26th of April, at Tweepoort Farm, with the commandos under General Michal Prinsloo. Mr. Jan Van Schalkwijk was chosen as chairman, and Mr. B.J. Malan as secretary. Here also the votes were unanimous, and General Michal Prinsloo, Commandant Rautenbach, and Commandant J.J. Van Niekerk were elected as representatives. After that on Roodekraal Farm.
Gummidge. Niekerk and Rawlings were a strangely assorted couple. They could not quarrel, for the reason that Niekerk had no English and Rawlings no Dutch. Niekerk held stoutly to the theory that all Englishmen were mad, more or less, and excused his companion's peculiarities accordingly. He had met Rawlings tramping in the Transvaal and given him a lift.
I must add that Commandant H. Van Niekerk was chosen as representative of the bodyguard of President Steyn. It had been agreed with Lord Kitchener at Pretoria that if the chief officers of a commando were chosen as representatives, then there would be an armistice between this commando and the English during the time the officers were absent at the meeting at Vereeniging.
Drawn up on the opposite bank was a raft, by means of this the prospectors had crossed. We camped and considered the situation. We found two men with a wagon at the river. The owner of the wagon was an old Boer named Niekerk; he owned a farm in the Lydenburg District, but spent most of his life wandering about in search of game.
At meetings held with these commandos the following representatives were chosen: General Nieuwouwdt, and the Commandants Munnik Hertzog, J. Van der Merwe, C. Van Niekerk, Flemming, A.J. Bester, F. Jacobsz, H. Pretorius, and Veldtcornet Kritzinger. At these meetings also the burghers were unanimous in their decision not to give up their independence.
B.J. Du Plessis Private Secretary to himself in place of Mr. Gordon Fraser. The President also decided to have, in future, only thirty burghers as his bodyguard, and appointed Captain Niekerk as their Commandant. The Last Proclamation I now impressed upon my officers as forcibly as I could the importance of intercepting the communications of the enemy by blowing up their trains.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking