DE WET'S WANDERINGS.

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume XXIX, Issue 9485, 24 July 1902, Page 4

DE WET'S WANDERINGS.

Neither De Wet nor >Ste3*n, says a correspondent, was wounded in the war. De Wet was only ten days with his wife during tire whole campaign, and did not see her at ii.ll during the last two years. In many parts of the Orange River Colony the Boers lately suffered from a great scarcity of food supplies. They lived principally on meat and meoliies. Of bread, salt and sugar they 'had none, but they hud plenty of honey, coffee made from Kaffir corn, and mealies. In the Transvaal they made coffee from the roots of a certain, forest tree, and they say that this is a, very good equivalent for Java, coffee. The recent, drives in the northeast of the Orange River Colony left them no foodstuffs there. De Wet never slept in farmhouses, being afraid of capture. Among his last orders to the burghers was one inflicting a fine of £10 or 25 lashes on any burgher found sleeping in a house. De Wet tells of many interesting incidents which happened on the Boer side. The commandoes never slept at the same spot two nights running, thus making it very difficult for the British to make succw-sful night raids. They had an excellent intelligence system, as in well known by now. Their scouts, or spies as they call them, were, so well posted that if a British column or convoy moved from, any point all the commandoes within 70 miles knew it the same day, thus giving them time to prepare for attack or to clear off. News of the route of inarch of the column or convoy was sent from commando to commando., all being Soon acquainted with our movements. The sjambok was frequently used by the commandants to bring wavering burghers into the fighting line, its use having a far greater moral effect on the burghers? than any other punishment. They regarded it as a great humiliation to. be sjamboked. De Wet himself gave some instances in which ho used the sjambok.