A Nurse's Life in War and PeaceLaurence, E. C. (Eleanor Constance)
History
A Nurse's Life in War and Peace
Laurence, E. C. (Eleanor Constance)
Military nursing; Nursing -- Great Britain; South African War, 1899-1902 -- Medical care
Major ----, the Governor's secretary, was one of the party, and he had
provided himself with pins, needles, bandages, sticking plaster, and all
sorts of other things, most of which came in useful in the course of the
day. I heard afterwards that he told the Governor that he had never done
such a hard day's work before, as we made him walk for eleven and a half
hours, and only let him sit down for half an hour!
The time has gone so quickly down here, as there has been so much going
on, and every one has been so kind. We have had about twice as many
invitations as we could accept.
Now we are packing up to return to Kimberley, and as they have had some
good rains up there, I hope we shall find it a little cooled down. If
only we could take some of this lovely greenery with us! You have no
idea how grateful you ought to be in England that you can always find a
green field if you go to look for it, instead of perpetual greyness and
brownness and glare.
Soon after we get back P. will have to start off on circuit in the
colony, and I am hoping to go part of the way with him, and then to
start off on an expedition to visit some friends up country in Natal;
they are fifty miles from a railway. I am looking forward to this
tremendously. And then soon after it will be time for me to make tracks
for home, as I have now nearly reached the venerable age of
twenty-three, and am therefore eligible for beginning my training in an
adult hospital. And though this sort of life is very jolly for a time,
I should not like it for always; it is not so satisfying as useful work.
I am quite sad at saying good-bye to all my friends. I believe one makes
real friends more easily out here than one does in England. It must be
something in the air.
X
GREYTOWN, NATAL,
_April 1893_.
After my last letter to you we journeyed back, over the seven hundred
odd miles to Kimberley, and found life up there a little flat after the
gay time we had been having at the Cape; but I had some good tennis and
riding, and then we had to prepare for the circuit.
At each place that the judge visits he has to do a little entertaining,
so he has to take a cook and a butler with him; and as some of the
places where courts are held are quite villages, he has to take a
certain amount of groceries along too--and, of course, wine.
The Government provide a saloon carriage with a small kitchen on board,
so that is used as the judge's headquarters when near the railway lines;
but many of the places visited entail long drives in Cape carts.
The first place we went to was Colesberg, and we arrived there at 6 A.M.
We were quite a large party with the barristers, the clerk and
registrar, the interpreter, and the servants.
We were met by the magistrate and the sheriff, with a smart escort of
Cape Mounted Police, and a party of convicts to take the baggage up.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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