Prisoners at Pretoria

Waimate Daily Advertiser, Volume II, Issue 157, 2 June 1900, Page 3

Prisoners at Pretoria

Two lady nurses, one British and one colonial. recently reached Lorenzo Marquez horn lieidelDerg, in the Transvaal, where tlioy were employed prior to the war. At the end of February they completed their terra ol: office and lef o at- once, the strain ol suspend m which, they had lived since October being unsupportablw. The Boer stat'-munts as to the progress of the war were impossible ol belief — there would hardly have been a British soldier in South Africa if Boer reports on the difiWjnt engagements had been true — bus the ladies had no moan 5 of learning the actual state oi affairs, and so thoy left a country which was rapidly becoming unfit for English women to live in. They say bhat the Boer wom^n are far more bittor than the men. Some of them have beer: agitating for " a life for a life," evet\y woman losing a husband or a brother in the war to have t'-G pick ot the captured British officers in Pretoria and shoot him herself. Many of the women express admiration for the British soldiers, but term them " vildermens " (wildmen). Ouriously enough all Transvaal burghers, though piofersing no tloubls as to result oi the war, ureter British money to the coinage of Pretoria. People speaking English are reported and wstohei, it is said, but this can ouiy refer to individuals concerning whom suspicion exists. The nurses' testimony to the enlistmout of alleged toreign ambulance men in the ranks of the Boers sup-, ports all we have already heard. Why in Pretoria they saw Russian officers in full cloaks and asfcrachan caps, and Dutch, French and German officers, in regimentals wore plentiful there. It is interesting to learn that an immense trench was beingdug all round Pietoria, big enough to transport a waggon out of sight. The war balloon, however, can dodge that arrangement. British residents of Heidelberg live under a rigid system of passes, one of these being raquired even when a man only wants to go from one street to another. Seme articles of food were getting very scarce when the nurses left, and the syatenij of allowing rations to burghers' wives seems to be capable of improvement ; some getting much more than they require, and others, with large families, receiving some meal and one small piece of soap. Soap, by the way, is said to bo the one thing that the Boers have never stolen out of loyalists' houses. They have -carried away

pianos and diopped them on the veldt afterwards, but they have left soap se\erely alone. The Heidelberg Koers, who came back from the ironfc on leave. wnUi they extended as long us possible, brought with thorn some valuable 'oofc, some of it taken from the dead bodies of "Kngiish oilicsi.s. i'heir tieatraen: of natives is goincj icoxa bai to \vov og. 0 g. Thy nnfo-kv nate b!ack< are commandaoreil to ,york without payment, «md are tiogfted if th L y rufus^, v. bile il many cibcs they have been iobbcd >f everything they possess.