CHAPTER II AFTER INSTANCES OF BOYCOTTING-JOURNEY TO COLESBERG-COLESBERG OF COMING GENERAL ELECTION-DISCONTENT OF LOYALISTS-COMPENSATION BEFORE leaving Capetown I wandered through the lovely scenery of the Cape Peninsula, then glowing with a wonderful profusion of beautiful wild flowers-a veritable Paradise from the mountain tops down to the white sands on which break the great rollers of the South Atlantic, a rich land over which are scattered pleasant Dutch farmhouses, orchards, and vineyards, and where only a few deserted blockhouses here and there recall to one's mind the recent war. But amid these peaceful landscapes, as I discovered on revisiting some of my old friends, British and Dutch, on their farms, much treason simmered, while bitter disappointment and resentment rankled in the souls of a large section of the loyalists here as elsewhere in this unhappy colony. In Capetown itself the boycotting of loyalists was apparently not being carried on to any serious extent, though the exclusive dealing' conspiracy was gradually making way there, and merchants whose sons fought on our side were losing their Dutch business. But one had not to go far outside the city in any direction to find the oppressive system in force. As an INSTANCES OF BOYCOTTING 17 example, I will give an account of some of the cases of boycotting, fully verified, which occurred in the Malmesbury district, within fifty miles of Capetown, one of the richest corn and wine producing districts in the colony. From all sources comes the same story. In the two conquered Republics the Boers who fought bravely against us are far less bitter and are more ready to be friendly with their British neighbours than are the Cape Dutchmen, who, especially those who dwell in districts which the war never reached, are for the most part rebels at heart, and, though they had not the courage to take up arms against us, now employ the boycott the mean weapon of the cowardly. The solitary two loyal Dutchmen in one village of the Malmesbury district who had joined the Town Guard were absolutely boycotted. No Dutchman would buy from them or sell to them; they were treated with the greatest indignity; men kicked them and women spat at them whenever they showed themselves in the street. The persistent persecution compelled them in the end to leave the district. In another place a Dutch doctor was boycotted because he had joined a volunteer medical corps and tended the British wounded during the war. His practice has fallen in value from £1,200 to £300 per annum, all his Dutch patients deserting him. Another doctor had started practice in a village at the invitation of a committee of farmers who guaranteed him an income of £300 a year, and, as he was a poor man, they furnished a house for him. He, too, offered his services as surgeon to the British during the war, with the result that the farmers have withdrawn their guarantee, and by complicity with the vendor of the furniture, who maintained that he had not yet received payment for it, they had it с seized and sold. His income has dwindled to £40 a year, and he and his family are in a half-starving con dition. Neither are the women spared. A Dutchman, for example, in this district who had served the British in some capacity, found on his return that his wife, while ill, had been turned out of her lodgings into the street and no Dutch people would take her in. Still further west the loyal farmers, especially if they be Dutch, are being severely boycotted. Stock speculators will not deal with them. When loyalists are trekking, the disloyal farmers refuse to allow them to water their cattle unless they pay exorbitant blackmail, and in some cases their forage has been burned by their malignant neighbours. On the night of December 10 I left Capetown for Colesberg, which is six hundred miles distant, the railway journey occupying two nights and a day. Throughout the 11th the train traversed the dreary wastes of the Karroo, with its Soudan-like landscapes, and when we had passed Beaufort West and were crossing the regions where so much fighting was done during the Boer invasions and the guerilla raids the signs of the prolonged conflict became visible on every side. At frequent intervals one saw, perched on rocky eminences, the often picturesque little blockhouses, of varied architecture, linked one with the other by innumerable sangars and earthworks and hundreds of miles of barbed wire. Here and there, too, by the side of the line were the little graves topped by wooden crosses, where the British soldiers lie who died the soldier's death. From Colesberg Junction a short branch line takes one to within a mile of the town. Colesberg, which is about fifteen miles from the Orange River, is a little town containing less than two thousand inhabitants, the large majority of whom are Dutch, and were rebels almost to a man, woman, and child during hostilities. Lying as it does in a stony hollow closely hemmed in on all sides by steep rocky kopjes, it is one of the hottest places in the colony. It is a clean-looking little place, and, as there is a good water supply, the streets are lined with shady trees after the Dutch fashion, and very grateful to the eye are the masses of green foliage as one comes in from the burntup veldt. Colesberg is one of the birthplaces of Paul Kruger-for other townships also claim him—and here the people show you the house in which he was born. As a matter of fact, there was no town here at the time of his birth, but he was probably born somewhere in this district while his family were trekking. It is a typical township of the veldt, with a few hotels and stores, a Dutch and an English church, while outside is the ragged native village. Colesberg is in the centre of a rich cattle and sheep farming country, and this is perhaps the greatest horse-breeding district in the colony. The waggon road to the Orange River Colony passes through the town, and crosses the river by a fine bridge, the construction of which cost the colony £100,000. It was blown up during the war, and waggons have now to cross the stream by the Bethulie Bridge. Colesberg, like other Dutch townships, is fast asleep in the afternoon, the entire population taking the siesta; the doors and shutters are closed, and the place looks like a city of the dead. But it was morning when I drove in, and the town presented quite a lively appearance, for there was to be a great sale of cattle. Under the glaring sunshine the ox-waggons, with their long teams, slowly passed through the dusty streets; lowing cattle were being driven in for sale; mounted farmers rode in in numbers; and a solemn black boy, who holds the post of town crier, was going to and fro, ringing his bell and exhibiting a placard which announced in Dutch and English that an important general auction was being held in the main street. I attended the auction later on. A motley collection of second-hand furniture, crockery and other household goods, saddlery, and agricultural implements were being put up for sale, and the crowd around that bid and bought was chiefly composed, as I discovered afterwards, of ex-rebels who had taken up arms against us, some of them having just completed their term of imprisonment. It will be remembered that this neighbourhood was the scene of repeated fighting during the war, and Colesberg is surrounded by grave-strewn battlefields and the monuments raised to our dead. The Colesberg operations are very clearly explained in Sir A. Conan Doyle's book. Colesberg was for many months occupied by the Boer invaders from the Free State, and I may mention that they behaved extremely well, respecting the property of the British and paying in gold for everything they took, even on the last day of their occupation, when they were retiring before the British general advance. The people who behaved badly were not the invaders, but the Dutch townspeople, our own fellow-subjects. It is they who looted the houses of some of the wealthier British, and it is shrewdly suspected that a general domiciliary visit would result in the discovery of much of the furniture and household treasures of the loyalists in the dwellings of their neighbours. It was the Colesberg people, too, not the invaders, who grossly insulted and gloated over the few British who remained in the town. British inhabitants |