Canada eager contingents were despatched, making the total number of men sent to the seat of war from England, India, and the Colonies, no less than one hundred and fifty thousand men. No such expedition had ever been undertaken by England, or, for the matter of that, by any other country. All this vast army, with its munitions, stores, medical service, and hospitals, had to be transported a distance of seven thousand miles, and, although there were some blunders, and not a few scandals, this stupendous work was carried through with general smoothness and celerity. Finally, the supreme command was accepted by Lord Roberts, who only a few hours before had received the news of the heroic death at Colenso of Lieut. the Hon. Frederick Roberts, his only son. TOWARDS PRETORIA CHAPTER I CAPETOWN TRANSFIGURED CAPETOWN wakes up every morning and rubs its eyes, and stares at itself like a man who sees himself after his hair has turned white overnight. It cannot recognise its own photographs in these closing months of 1899. It used to be a humdrum little seaport capital, which only woke up when a steamer came in from London, but now it is so full of refugees that the pavements of its main thoroughfare are more crowded than those of Regent Street at four o'clock on a summer afternoon. There are said to be sixty thousand refugees here from Johannesburg and Kimberley, and they have jumped the city up into the semblance of a western metropolis. must have been an interesting It clings to the base of a towseaweed clutches the small Leave out the rock, and One can see that it place before the war. ering, naked rock, as the boulders on the beach. |