CHAPTER I.

Antecedents.

    The child is father to the man;
    And I could wish my days to be
    Bound each to each by natural piety.

Wordsworth.

A few preliminary pages of personal history I offer to those who followed me either in thought or deed during the Anglo-Boer War.

My ancestors were Germans; my grandfather was born in the South.  About the year 1820 he, along with two brothers, bade farewell to the land of his nativity and emigrated to South Africa.  They found a home for themselves in the neighbourhood of Port Elizabeth, and there they settled as farmers.  Two of the brothers married women of Dutch extraction; one died a bachelor.  A small village, Humansdorp, situated near to Port Elizabeth, was the birth-place of my father.  There he spent the greater part of his life.  He, too, married a Dutch lady; and we children adopted the language of our mother, and spoke Dutch rather than German.

My father took an active part in several of the early Kaffir Wars, and rendered assistance to the Colonial forces in subjugating the native tribes in the Eastern Province of the Cape Colony.  With rapt attention and enthusiasm we children would listen to him as he told the tale of those early native wars.  I then thought that there was nothing so sublime and glorious as war.  My imagination was inflamed, and I longed intensely to participate in such exciting adventures.  My experience of recent years has corrected my views.  I think differently now.  Peace is better than war.  War is brutal and damnable.  It is indeed “hell let loose.”

On the 20th of April, 1870, the arrival of a little Kritzinger was announced on the farm Wildeman’s-Kraal, Port Elizabeth District.  That little fellow happened to be myself.  I do not recollect much of the days of my youth—­save that I was of a very lively disposition, with a fondness for all sorts of fun, and often of mischief, which landed me occasionally in great trouble.  My parents obeyed the injunctions of Holy Writ in diligently applying the rod when they thought it necessary.  As a child, I could but dimly understand, and scarcely believe, that love was at the root of every chastisement.

At the age of five I met with a serious accident.  While gathering shells on the beach at Port Elizabeth, the receding waves drew me seaward with irresistible power.  But for the pluck and courage of my little playfellow, a lassie of some twelve summers, I was lost.  She came to the rescue.  I was saved at the last moment:  a few seconds more and I must have perished in the deep.