Following the Equator: A Journey Around the World. Part 7Twain, Mark
General
Following the Equator: A Journey Around the World. Part 7
Twain, Mark
Equator -- Description and travel; Twain, Mark, 1835-1910 -- Travel; Voyages around the world
Also, in Jameson's camp, that night, "there lay about 30 wounded or
otherwise disabled" men. Also during the night "some 30 or 40 young
fellows got separated from the command and straggled through into
Johannesburg." Altogether a possible 150 men gone, out of his 530. His
lads had fought valorously, but had not been able to get near enough to a
Boer to kick him around the Transvaal.
At dawn the next morning the column of something short of 400 whites
resumed its march. Jameson's grit was stubbornly good; indeed, it was
always that. He still had hopes. There was a long and tedious
zigzagging march through broken ground, with constant harassment from the
Boers; and at last the column "walked into a sort of trap," and the Boers
"closed in upon it." "Men and horses dropped on all sides. In the
column the feeling grew that unless it could burst through the Boer lines
at this point it was done for. The Maxims were fired until they grew too
hot, and, water failing for the cool jacket, five of them jammed and went
out of action. The 7-pounder was fired until only half an hour's
ammunition was left to fire with. One last rush was made, and failed,
and then the Staats Artillery came up on the left flank, and the game was
up."
Jameson hoisted a white flag and surrendered.
There is a story, which may not be true, about an ignorant Boer farmer
there who thought that this white flag was the national flag of England.
He had been at Bronkhorst, and Laing's Nek, and Ingogo and Amajuba, and
supposed that the English did not run up their flag excepting at the end
of a fight.
The following is (as I understand it) Mr. Garrett's estimate of Jameson's
total loss in killed and wounded for the two days:
"When they gave in they were minus some 20 per cent. of combatants.
There were 76 casualties. There were 30 men hurt or sick in the wagons.
There were 27 killed on the spot or mortally wounded."
Total, 133, out of the original 530. It is just 25 per cent.--[However,
I judge that the total was really 150; for the number of wounded carried
to Krugersdorp hospital was 53; not 30, as Mr. Garrett reports it. The
lady whose guest I was in Krugerdorp gave me the figures. She was head
nurse from the beginning of hostilities (Jan. 1) until the professional
nurses arrived, Jan. 8th. Of the 53, "Three or four were Boers"; I quote
her words.]--This is a large improvement upon the precedents established
at Bronkhorst, Laing's Nek, Ingogo, and Amajuba, and seems to indicate
that Boer marksmanship is not so good now as it was in those days. But
there is one detail in which the Raid-episode exactly repeats history.
By surrender at Bronkhorst, the whole British force disappeared from the
theater of war; this was the case with Jameson's force.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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