United States or Somalia ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
About midnight a lot of Boer prisoners, and a long train of their ox-waggons, began coming in. It was very dark, and they blundered along, knocking down telegraph posts, and invading regimental lines, amidst a frightful din from the black drivers, and a profane antiphony between two officers, of the camp and the convoy respectively.
The women of the Jewish captivities were carried past the end of the Red Sea and along the Mediterranean in ox-waggons, where such cattle would now all perish for want of water and pasture; in fact, the route to Assyria would have proved more fatal to captives then than the middle passage has been to Africans since.
Certain ones of them had brought with them big white-tented ox-waggons for conveying ammunition, commissariat stores, and such extra luggage as some might wish to carry; and these were sent ahead as soon as the field-cornet, the military leader of the ward, learned that all his men had arrived from their homes.
The separate commandoes were herded together in big groups of several hundred men, sitting and lying about and talking. The ox-waggons and battered Cape-carts were drawn up together in a great array; but the busiest part of it all was the division of the horses into mobs fit or unfit for remounts, and the distribution of them to the various regiments. Rimington superintended this job.
Every mess possessed one or two ox-waggons, loaded with a tent, portmanteaux, trunks, foodstuffs, and ammunition. We made about twenty miles daily, passing through Lydenburg, Machadodorp, Carolina, and Ermelo, and reached Volksrust on the fourteenth day.
But judging by the expression on Jantje's features by the camp fire that night, as he blew long fragrant clouds into the gaping nostrils of his envious friends, I have my doubts about that thrashing. We halted frequently to allow the straggling ox-waggons to close up. Then we would dismount, stamp our chilly feet, draw our overcoats or blankets closer, and discuss trivialities.
Fortunately for the Boers the British batteries fired only one shot into the camp that day, and the burghers were able to complete the bridge before night by means of the ropes and chains from their ox-waggons.
It was rarely the case that the Boers attempted to trek for any considerable distance with their heavy waggons when they were aware of the presence of the enemy in the vicinity. Ox-waggons were always left behind, while only a small number of mule-waggons, bearing provisions and ammunition, were taken, and on that account they were able to move with greater rapidity than their opponents.
After the British captured Bloemfontein, and the memorable Krijgsraad at Kroonstad determined that guerilla warfare should be followed thereafter, it was not an easy matter for a burgher to remain behind in the laagers, for the majority of the ox-waggons and other camp paraphernalia was sent home and laager life was not so attractive as before.
Orderlies run or gallop about; quartermasters and adjutants and others hurry here and there, with their hands full of papers from one marquee to another, collecting their orders; shopping as it were, but shopping on rather a large scale; and the big ox-waggons come creaking along and churning up the mud. This is where the cost of a war comes in.
Word Of The Day