ly not a single one. Even where there were carriages
the women had always to keep them in readiness to fly on them before the
columns of the enemy, who had now already commenced to carry the women
away from their dwellings to the concentration camps within their own
lines, in nearly all villages where the English had established strong
garrisons. Proclamations had been issued by Lord Roberts, prescribing
that any building within ten miles from the railway, where the Boers had
blown up or broken up the railway line, should be burnt down. This was
also carried out, but not only within the specified radius, but also
everywhere throughout the State. Everywhere houses were burnt down or
destroyed with dynamite. And, worse still, the furniture itself and the
grain were burnt, and the sheep, cattle and horses were carried off. Nor
was it long before horses were shot down in heaps, and the sheep killed
by thousands by the Kaffirs and the National Scouts, or run through by
the troops with their bayonets. The devastation became worse and worse
from day to day. And the Boer women--did they lose courage with this
before their eyes? By no means, as when the capturing of women, or
rather the war against them and against the possessions of the Boer
commenced, they took to bitter flight to remain at least out of the
hands of the enemy. In order to keep something for themselves and their
children, they loaded the carriages with grain and the most
indispensable furniture. When then a column approached a farm, even at
night, in all sorts of weather, many a young daughter had to take hold
of the leading rope of the team of oxen, and the mother the whip, or
vice versa. Many a smart, well-bred daughter rode on horseback and urged
the cattle on, in order to keep out of the hands of the pursuers as long
as at all possible, and not to be carried away to the concentration
camps, which the British called Refugee Camps (Camps of Refuge). How
incorrect, indeed! Could any one ever have thought before the war that
the twentieth century could show such barbarities? No. Any one knows
that in war, cruelties more horrible than murder can take place, but
that such direct and indirect murder should have been committed against
defenceless women and children is a thing which I should have staked my
head could never have happened in a war waged by the civilized English
nation. And yet it happened. Laagers containing no one but women and
children and decrepit ol