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Updated: September 17, 2025
The total number of columns amounted to at least sixty, which varied in number from two hundred to two thousand, and seldom hunted alone. Could their movements be marked in red upon a chart, the whole of that huge district would be criss-crossed, from Taungs to Komati and from Touws River to Pietersburg, with the track of our weary but indomitable soldiers.
During the first days of November, 1900, we went from Pietersburg to Witnek, about nineteen miles north of Bronkhorst Spruit, in the Pretoria district. We had enjoyed a fortnight's rest, which had especially benefited our horses, and our circumstances were much more favourable in every respect when we left Pietersburg than when we had entered it.
There were a good many foreign subjects at Pietersburg but they were mostly British, and these persons, who also had some of their horses, etc., commandeered, were a great source of trouble, for many Boer officers and burghers treated them without any ceremony, simply taking away what they wanted for their commandos.
His plan was to send a column with secrecy and dispatch to Pietersburg, which would be occupied as a base from which the column would work southwards along the line of the Olifant's River, in co-operation with columns acting northwards from the Delagoa Bay Railway.
The Krugersdorp Commando had been sent to its own district, from Pietersburg via Warmbad and Rustenburg, under Commandant Jan Kemp, in order to be placed under General De la Rey's command.
The latter part of our journey, along Olifants River, through Zebedelsland to Pietersburg, was exhausting for man and horse. Some of us often had nothing but a little rice and a small piece of meat for several days in succession. There was scarcely any grass for our horses, and yet we had to ride hard night and day.
Was it the line to Delagoa Bay or the Pietersburg branch? If it were the former it should run east. But so far as I could see this line ran northwards. Still, it might be only winding its way out among the hills. I resolved to follow it. The night was delicious. A cool breeze fanned my face and a wild feeling of exhilaration took hold of me. At any rate, I was free, if only for an hour.
The present President fared better. A Dutch company styled "The Nederlandsch Zuid Afrikaansche Spoorweg Maatschappy," abbreviated "Z.A.S.M.," undertook the work and completed it in 1887, from the Portuguese border to Pretoria. The line from Pretoria to the Natal border was soon after built, as also several extensions around the Wit-waters Rand, and that from Pretoria to Pietersburg.
But let me say in passing that you are as welcome here as anywhere, neither more nor less. You are as welcome as you were in the days when we trekked from the Veal to Pietersburg and on into Bechuanaland, and both slept in the cape-wagon under one blanket. I don't think any more of you than I did then, and I don't think any less, and I don't want to see you any more or any fewer.
At that time hardly even a scout had quitted British territory; now almost every mile of railway and every considerable town of the two republics, except Pietersburg, was in the possession of the British Army; the Boer Governments had been expelled; Natal was free; organized resistance had ceased; the remnants of a baffled and bewildered enemy were prowling aimlessly in small bodies.
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