When the war began and all the large mines on the Witwatersrand and all the big industries and stores in Johannesburg and Pretoria were obliged to cease operations, much distress prevailed among the poorer classes of foreigners who were left behind when the great exodus was concluded, and after a few months their poverty became most acute.  Again the Boer women shouldered the burden, and in a thousand different ways relieved the suffering of those who were the innocent victims of the war.  Subscription lists were opened and the wealthy Boers contributed liberally to the fund for the distressed.  Depots where the needy could secure food and clothing were established, while a soup-kitchen where Mrs. Peter Maritz Botha, one of the wealthiest women in the Republics, stood behind a table and distributed food to starving men and women, was a veritable blessing to hundreds of needy foreigners.  In Johannesburg, Boer women searched through the poorest quarters of the city for families in need of food or medicine and never a needy individual was neglected.  Among the few thousand British subjects who remained behind there were many who were in dire straits, but Boer women made no distinctions between friend and enemy when there was an opportunity for performing a charitable deed.  Nor was their charity limited to civilians and those who were neutral in their sentiments with regard to the war.  When the British prisoners of war were confined in the racecourse at Pretoria the Boer women sent many a waggon-load of fruit, luxuries, and reading matter to the soldiers who had been sent against them to deprive them of that which they esteemed most—­the independence of their country.  The spirit which animated the women was never better exemplified than by the action of a little Boer girl of about ten years who approached a British prisoner on the platform of the station at Kroonstaad and gave him a bottle of milk which she had kept carefully concealed under her apron.  The soldier hardly had time to thank her for her gift before she turned and ran away from him as rapidly as she had the strength.  It seemed as if she loved him as a man in distress, but feared him as a soldier, and hated him as the enemy of her country.

Besides assisting in the care of the wounded, the baking of bread for the burghers, and giving aid to the destitute, the women of the farms were obliged to attend to the flocks and herds which were left in their charge when the fathers, husbands, and brothers went to the front to fight.  All the laborious duties of the farm were performed by the women, and it was common to witness a woman at work in the fields or driving a long ox-waggon along the roads.  When the tide of war changed and the enemy drove the burghers to the soil of the Republics the work of the women became even more laborious and diversified.  The widely-separated farmhouses then became typical lunch stations for the burghers, and the women willingly were the proprietresses.  Boers journeying from