and scores of Boer women can claim the distinction of
having taken part in many bloody battles. Not a few yielded up their
life's blood on the altar of liberty, and many will carry the scars of
bullet-wounds to the grave.

In the early part of the campaign there was no military rule which forbade
women journeying to the front, and in consequence the laagers enjoyed the
presence of many of the wives and daughters of the burghers.
Commandant-General Joubert set an example to his men by having Mrs.
Joubert continually with him on his campaigning trips, and the burghers
were not slow in patterning after him. While the greater part of the army
lay around besieged Ladysmith large numbers of women were in the laagers,
and they were continually busying themselves with the preparation of food
for their relatives and with the care of the sick and wounded. Not
infrequently did the women accompany their husbands to the trenches along
the Tugela front, and it was asserted, with every evidence of veracity,
that many of them used the rifles against the enemy with even more ardour
and precision than the men. On February 28th, while the fighting around
Pieter's Hills was at its height, the British forces captured a Boer woman
of nineteen years who had been fatally wounded. Before she died she stated
that she had been fighting from the same trench with her husband, and that
he had been killed only a few minutes before a bullet struck her.

While the Boer army was having its many early successes in Natal few of
the women partook in the actual warfare from choice, or because they
believed that it was necessary for them to fight. The majority of those
who were in the engagements happened to be with their husbands when the
battles were begun, and had no opportunity of escaping. The burghers
objected to the presence of women within the firing lines, and every
effort was made to prevent them from being in dangerous localities, but
when it was impossible to transfer them to places of safety during the
heat of the battle there was no alternative but to provide them with
rifles and bandoliers so that they might protect themselves. The
half-hundred women who endured the horrors of the siege at Paardeberg with
Cronje's small band of warriors chose to remain with their husbands and
brothers when Lord Roberts offered to convey them to places of safety, but
they were in no wise an impediment to the burghers, for they assisted in
digging trenches and w