Two Others, Both
Ready To Start, Were Only Just Stopped In Time.
The first thought was for the British prisoners, and a small party
headed by the Duke of Marlborough rode to their rescue.
Let it be
said once for all that their treatment by the Boers was excellent
and that their appearance would alone have proved it. One hundred
and twenty-nine officers and thirty-nine soldiers were found in the
Model Schools, which had been converted into a prison. A day later
our cavalry arrived at Waterval, which is fourteen miles to the
north of Pretoria. Here were confined three thousand soldiers,
whose fare had certainly been of the scantiest, though in other
respects they appear to have been well treated. [Footnote: Further
information unfortunately shows that in the case of the sick and of
the Colonial prisoners the treatment was by no means good.] Nine
hundred of their comrades had been removed by the Boers, but
Porter's cavalry was in time to release the others, under a brisk
shell fire from a Boer gun upon the ridge. Many pieces of good luck
we had in the campaign, but this recovery of our prisoners, which
left the enemy without a dangerous lever for exacting conditions of
peace, was the most fortunate of all.
In the centre of the town there is a wide square decorated or
disfigured by a bare pedestal upon which a statue of the President
was to have been placed. Hard by is the bleak barnlike church in
which he preached, and on either side are the Government offices
and the Law Courts, buildings which would grace any European
capital.
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