Bloemfontein

“ It may therefore be said to be a remote town offering but little temptations to its inhabitants to gad about to other markets. The smaller towns within the borders of the Republic are but villages containing at most not more than a few hundred inhabitants. I am told that Bloemfontein has three thousand; but no census has as yet been taken, and I do not know whether the number stated is intended to include or exclude the coloured population,—who as a rule do not live in Bloemfontein but at a neighbouring hamlet, devoted to the use of the natives, called Wray Hook. ”

“ We at last reached a cool, inviting-looking hotel, and we thoroughly enjoyed that well-served dinner laid before us on clean linen and bright silver, the delicious viands seeming all the better for our temporary deprivation. If any one troubled with dyspepsia should travel for three months through Africa, and live as the people do, never hurrying, and occasionally getting a jolting in a long coach ride, his would soon be a forgotten malady.
Bloemfontein, being the seat of government, is by far the largest, best, and most important town in the Free State. ”

“ For myself, I believed that that 13th of March should see a fight to the finish, cost what it might! for if Bloemfontein was to be taken, it would only be over our dead bodies.
With this before my eyes, I made all necessary arrangements, riding at nightfall from position to position, and speaking both to the officers and to the private burghers. They must play the man, I told them, and save the capital at any cost. An excellent spirit prevailed amongst them; on every face one could read the determination to conquer or to die. ”

“ We spread them all out on sheets in the verandah of the farm in little heaps, and very pretty and tempting they looked, the white sheets down the shady verandah, and little piles of sweetmeats and things dotted all over them. Each man drew a ticket and chose his eatable, some putting it carefully away, others bolting it immediately. One can get absolutely nothing in Bloemfontein, and the men were as keen as school children. ”

“ The result is that Bloemfontein in respect to climate and education offers peculiar advantages to its residents. It is not necessary to send a child away either for English air or for English teaching.
In church matters Bloemfontein has a footing which is peculiarly its own. The Dutch Reformed Church is the Church of the people. There are 18,—only 18,—congregations in the State, of which 16 receive Government support. The worshippers of the Free State must, it is feared, be called upon to travel long distances to their churches. ”

“ The last mail—that is to say, the last news of any sort of the outside world—which we have received was on April 27th before leaving Bloemfontein; three months less a week since any whisper concerning events or people out of our immediate sight has reached us. My ignorance of things in general weighs on me. It is a taste of life in the dark ages before modern inventions kept one in touch with the world.
During all this time we have been wandering like an army in a dream over the unlimited surface of the veldt. ”

“ At the Bloemfontein Club the chance has occurred, and certainly never before, in any time or place, could you have seen such representative gatherings of the British race from all parts of the world as you will see if you stroll any day into the verandah and smoking-room and bar of the Bloemfontein Club. From the old country and from every British colony all over the world these men of one race, in a common crisis, here for one moment meet, look into each others' faces, drink, and greet and pass on ”

“ Education is going steadily forward, fees having been entirely done away with in all elementary schools. A college, normal school, high school and many primary schools have been established, and education is compulsory, but little is being done among the blacks. Bloemfontein is the capital, with a present population of 38,-ooo. The undulating plains of the interior afford excellent grazing. The colony is rich in coal-mines; while in and on the borders are valuable diamond mines, the yield from which, as well as of garnets and other precious stones, has been phenomenally large. ”

“ A glance along this stretch of road will show that between De Aar and Bloemfontein it receives three tributary routes from three different points of the sea-coast—Port Elizabeth, Port Alfred, and East London—the whole system concentrating some sixty miles before Bloemfontein, at Springfontein, which thus becomes a (p. 012) central depot fed by four convergent, but, in their origin, independent streams of supply; an administrative condition always conducive to security and to convenience. ”

“ If there be no luxury, everything is decent. The members of the Volksraad are not carried about in gorgeous equipages, but when they have walked slowly to their Chamber they behave themselves there with decorum. There is nothing pretentious in Bloemfontein,—nothing to raise a laugh at the idea that a town with so small a population should call itself a capital. ”

“ Presently we found ourselves joining in the chorus of that most touching melody, "Going back to Dixie," greatly to the delight of our sociable and talented neighbours. Daylight next morning brought us to Bloemfontein and civilization, and what impressed me most was the fact of daily newspapers being sold at a bookstall, which sight I had not seen for many months. On arriving at Cape Town, I was most hospitably entertained at Groot Schuurr by Colonel Frank Rhodes, in the absence of his brother. ”

“ Bloemfontein is a very pleasant town, regularly laid out with streets running at right angles and a large central market square. Many of the houses are surrounded by large wooded gardens. Through the town runs the Bloemspruit. After a disastrous flood in 1904 the course of this spring was straightened and six stone bridges placed across it. There are several fine public buildings, mostly built of red brick and a fine-grained white stone quarried in the neighbourhood. The Raadzaal, a building in the Renaissance style, faces Market Square. ”

“ Throughout the Transvaal in every town and hamlet, the House of God is invariably the central building, as also it is the centre of the most potent influence. In both Republics the minister was emphatically "a Master in Israel"; and in the welcome shadows of this great church I waited to witness one of the most interesting events of the century—the proclaiming of Pretoria a British city by the official hoisting in it, as earlier in Bloemfontein, of the British flag; and by the stately "march past" of the British troops. ”

“ In the Proclamations of the wise and great Field-Marshal, and the Notices, Ordinances, and Camp Orders of his Lieutenants set to rule Bloemfontein after its capture by us, are to be found an account of the Methods by which a Triumphant Army establishes its own new rule in a Conquered City and Territory. ”

“ Possibly that ought to have been done, but all through this campaign our army rulers have been excessively tender-handed in such matters; forgetting that clemency to the vanquished is often cruelty to the victors. So in Bloemfontein healthy civilians, whether foes or friends, slept on feather beds, while suffering and delirious soldiers were stretched on an earthen floor that was sodden with almost incessant rain. ”

“ The excellent shops are thoroughly British, the British coinage is the only currency, and newspapers, both friendly and Anglophobe, are published in English. When the railway reaches Bloemfontein, it will possibly become a great health resort for English people, as its climate has a wonderfully beneficial effect on consumptives who can survive the shaking of the present means of conveyance; and invalids who succeed in arriving find something which is a rare curiosity in South Africa, and which does not exist in the Old Colony from Cape Town to Kimberley — a decent inn. ”

“ All the scattered Anglo-Celtic races had sent their best blood to fight for the common cause. Peace is the great solvent, as war is the powerful unifier. For the British as for the German Empire much virtue had come from the stress and strain of battle. To stand in the market square of Bloemfontein and to see the warrior types around you was to be assured of the future of the race. The middle-sized, square-set, weather-tanned, straw-bearded British regulars crowded the footpaths. ”

“ The shops are practically bare. Nothing worth speaking of comes to market. The matter has passed from the stage at which it might be regarded as a joke. Bloemfontein really hungers for necessary articles of diet, and it has one week in which to raise an extra appetite before the (p. 396) first train of foodstuffs comes to its stores. The hopes of two trucks a day for Bloemfontein merchants, held out two weeks ago by the Imperial Military Railway Officials, have proved vain. The two trucks never came. The line has been taken up wholly by the transportation of troops and army supplies. ”

“ For instance, the army at Bloemfontein, the victorious army, which had suffered exceedingly from the many annoyances of the Boers, comported themselves in their day of triumph with admirable reserve. Brave as the British warriors of old, they showed themselves men of finer stamp and higher discipline than the men who followed Wellington. ”

“ N.N.E. of Bloemfontein on the same railway line. Harrismith, 8300, is in the N.E. of the colony, 60 m. by rail from Ladysmith, Natal. Jagersfontein, 5657, is in the S.W. of the province and owes its importance to the existence there of a diamond mine. Ladybrand, 3862, Ficksburg, 1954, and Wepener, 1366, lie in the valley of the Caledon near the Basutoland frontier. Winburg, 2762, lies between Bloemfontein and Kroonstad. All these towns are separately noticed. Other towns on the trunk railway, going from south to north, are Springfontein, 1000, an important railway junction ”

“ Meantime we can make out in our break-of-day scoutings up the river that bodies of men are approaching from the east. They have made a laager about ten miles up, and evidently mean to dispute our passage to the capital. The longer old Cronjé holds out, the more men from Colesberg and Natal will come up, the more entrenchments will be cut, and the harder will be our way to Bloemfontein. 'Tis the only way he sees to save the town, for we should march straight in else. ”

“ In Market Square on the 28th of the following May the annexation of the Orange Free State to the British dominions was proclaimed. In 1907 the first session of the first parliament elected under the constitution granting the colony self-government was held in Bloemfontein. In 1910 when the colony became a province of the Union of South Africa under its old designation of Orange Free State, Bloemfontein was chosen as the seat of the Supreme Court of South Africa. Its growth as a business centre after the close of the war in 1902 was very marked. ”

“ Many English visitors go to Bloemfontein for the benefit of their health, but they do not look so robust nor gain strength as quickly as persons who have been six months in the Transvaal. The fine climate of that country, if sought in time, is almost a certain cure for any lung disease or asthmatic trouble. ”

“ Then I would propose to attack Bloemfontein from Kimberley, and I think an army holding Bloemfontein based on Kimberley will be better off than one which holds Bloemfontein but has allowed Kimberley to be again invested. Time, after all, is in our favour. The Boers cannot reproduce their horses which are being used up, and if they lose their mobility, they lose their power. I believe that French and Gatacre are strong enough to prevent the spread of disaffection, and that when the 7th division arrives they will join hands, and the disaffected Dutch will go back to their homes. ”

“ Neither for that rain can the army doctors be held responsible, though it almost drove them to despair. Nor (p. 039) was it their fault that the Boers were allowed at this very time to capture the Bloemfontein waterworks, and shatter them. Bad water at Paardeberg caused the epidemic. Bad water at Bloemfontein brought it to a climax. In this little city of the sick the medical men had at one time a constant average of 1800 sufferers on their hands; mostly cases of enteric which, as truly as shot and shell, shows no respect of persons. ”

“ This movement served to exasperate the authorities, who rigorously enforced the law and sent them to jail. The first batch of prisoners from Bloemfontein were conveyed south to Edenburg; and as further batches came down from Bloemfontein they had to be retransferred north to Kroonstad. In the course of our tour in connexion with the Natives' Land Act in August, 1913, we spent a week-end with the Rev. A. P. Pitso, of the last-named town. Thirty-four of the women passive resisters were still incarcerated there, doing hard labour. ”

“ There's always tucker in the plate and coffee in the cup;
But bully beef and biscuits—well, I'm fair Fed Up!
MISS BLOEMFONTEIN.
There appears to be some general misapprehension as to the authenticity of the letter written by "Miss (p. 94) Bloemfontein" in our issue of yesterday. The Editors wish to state that the communication in question was written by a lady, a member of a well-known family in this city, and undoubtedly reflects with wit and frankness the feeling of many of those to whom the abandonment of this place to the British forces has been a bitter disappointment. ”