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Updated: June 26, 2025
The most inobservant traveller in South Africa must be struck by the network of fortifications erected almost throughout the length and breadth of the country. Could the English have given the Boers a better testimonial of gallant behaviour than these? Surely blockhouses and bulwarks are not required for cowards, for they would never approach them.
Old Gunter's horse gits away with him into the wide open. I s'pose there'd been a hunderd Boers firing at the runaway for three minutes, and at last off comes Gunter. He don't stir for a minute or more, then we see him pick himself up a bit quick, but settle back again.
We shall be obedient to your orders. 'We have put our names on your paper, but the Boers have our cattle all the same, said one man. Another shouted out with vehemence, 'please don't tell us to go on respecting the boundary line. Why should we do so when the Boers don't? 'Who speaks about a boundary line? said another speaker, probably a heavy loser. 'Is it a thing that a man can eat?
The confidence of the Boers would be so increased as to add greatly to their fighting power, the difficulties of Sir Redvers Buller would be multiplied, the probability of outside intervention might be brought nearer, and the Army of invasion to be eventually resisted would be weaker by something like a quarter.
On January 25th French sent Stephenson and Brabazon to push a reconnaissance to the north of Colesberg, and found that the Boers were making a fresh position at Rietfontein, nine miles nearer their own border. A small action ensued, in which we lost ten or twelve of the Wiltshire Regiment, and gained some knowledge of the enemy's dispositions.
"How the deuce did you get a pass?" put in another man with a face like a weasel. "I have loads of friends among the Boers. "You don't suppose those poor Boers are going to let you out once they have got you in?" went on the tormentor. "Why, man, it's against human nature. You've got all their wool: now do you think they want you to have their skin too?"
The Kruger party, it was well known, would proceed to any extreme rather than concede anything to the Uitlanders; but at that time the majority of the Boers were opposed to the Kruger policy of favouring the Hollanders and Germans to the exclusion of all other Uitlanders, and this majority would not have consented to measures calculated to embroil them with the people who had made their country prosperous, and even to imperil the very existence of the State, whilst an alternative course so easy as the one presented lay open to them.
I don't know much about goats, so will pass them, though I very much doubt if any Australian squatter would give them grass room. On most of the farms a small orchard is found enclosed in stone walls. Here again the ignorance of the Boers is very marked; the fruit is of poor quality, though the variety is large.
Sir H. de Villiers was of opinion that the executions in these cases, having been ordered by properly constituted Court Martial of the Boers' forces after due trial, did not fall under the cognisance of your Commissioners.
If we get stopped by the Boers, we're wounded and getting away from the fighting." "Yes, that might do. We do look bad." "Horribly bad, Val. You look a miserable wreck of a fellow." "And you, I won't say what," I retorted, a little irritably. "So much the better. When shall we go to-night?" "No. Let's have a good sleep to-night, and talk to Joeboy about it in the morning.
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