Kimberley does not in the least give one the idea of a beleaguered and relieved town.  There are a few marks of shells, but so few and far between as not to attract attention, and you might walk all about the town without being struck by anything out of the common.  I have sampled the roast-horse and roast-mule which the garrison seems to have been chiefly living on for the past five or six weeks, and find both pretty good, quite equal, if not superior, to the old trek-ox.  Some people tell us pathetic stories of the hardships to women and young children and babies, owing to the difficulty of getting proper food, especially milk.  On the other hand, many seem to have actually enjoyed the siege, and two or three young ladies have assured me that they found it infinitely diverting and enjoyed an excellent time, making up afternoon tea-parties among their friends.  The relief was not the occasion of any excitement or rejoicing whatever.  People walked about the streets and went about their business and served in their shops without showing in their appearance or manner any trace of having passed through a bad time or having been just delivered from it.  They seemed, on the whole, glad to see us, but there was no enthusiasm.  This was partly due, I think, to the absence of drink.  The Colonial’s idea of gratitude and good-fellowship is always expressed in drink, and cannot be separated from it, or even exist without it.  Many felt this.  Several said to me, “We are awfully glad to see you, old chap, but the fact is there’s no whisky.”  On the whole, except the last week, during which the Boers had a hundred-pounder gun turned on, one doesn’t gather that the siege of Kimberley was noteworthy, as sieges go, either for the fighting done or the hardships endured.  But that is not to reflect on the defenders, who showed a most plucky spirit all through, and would have resisted a much severer strain if it had been brought to bear upon them.

LETTER XI

PAARDEBERG—­THE BOMBARDMENT

February 24, 1900.

We are once more upon the Modder.  I should think the amount of blood, Dutch and English, this river has drunk in the last few months will give it a bad name for ever.  There is something deadly about that word Modder.  Say it over to yourself.  Pah!  It leaves a taste of blood in the mouth.

We have been fighting in a desultory kind of way for the last week here.  Coming from Kimberley, where we had gone to holloa back French (you could follow him by scent all the way from the dead horses), we made a forced march and rejoined him here by the river, where he is busily engaged, with Kitchener at the other end, in bombarding old Cronje in the middle.  They have fairly got the old man.  Kitchener had stuck to him pretty tight, it seems, after we left them that evening at Klip Drift.  French has nicked in ahead.  Macdonald has arrived, I believe, or is arriving, and there are various other brigades and divisions casting up from different quarters, all concentrating on unhappy Cronje.  Lord Roberts, I suppose, will get the credit, but part of it, one would think, belongs to Kitchener, who planned the movement and put it in train before Lord Roberts arrived.