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Ladysmith - The Diary of a Siege by Henry W. Nevinson
page 7 of 206 (03%)
of any kind. So we travelled into the night, the monotony only broken by
one violent collision which shook us all flat on the floor, while arms
and stores fell crashing upon us. In the silent pause which followed,
whilst we wondered if we were dead, I could hear the Kaffirs chattering
in their mud huts close by, and in the distance a cornet was playing
"Home, Sweet Home," with variations.

It must have been the next evening, as we were waiting three or four
hours, as usual, for the line to clear, that General Joubert came up in
a special train. A few young men and boys in ordinary clothes formed his
"staff." The General himself wore the usual brown slouch hat with crape
band, and a blue frock coat, not luxuriously new. His beard was quite
white, but his long straight hair was still more black than grey. The
brown sallow face was deeply wrinkled and marked, but the dark brown
eyes were still bright, and looked out upon the world with a kind of
simplicity mingled with shrewdness, or perhaps some subtler quality. He
spoke English with a piquant lack of grammar and misuse of words. When I
travelled with him next day, almost the first thing he said to me was,
"The heart of my soul is bloody with sorrow." His moderating influence
on the Kruger Government is well known, and he described to me how he
had done his utmost for peace. But he also described how bit by bit
England had pushed the Boers out of their inheritance, and taken
advantage of them in every conference and native war. He was
particularly hurt that the Queen had taken no notice of the long letter
or pamphlet he wrote to her on the situation. And, by the way, I often
observed what regard most Boers appear to feel for the Queen personally.
They constantly couple her name with Gladstone's when they wish to say
anything nice about English politics. As to the General's views on the
crisis, there would be little new to say. Till the present war his hope
had been for a South African Confederacy under English protection--the
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