pe Town were marked as plainly
as a kopje near Pretoria, while the British forts at Durban and Cape Town
were as accurately pictured as the roads that led to them. The Boers had a
map of the environs of Ladysmith which was a hundred times better than
that furnished by the British War Office, yet Ladysmith was the Natal base
of the British army for many years.

The greater part of the credit for the Boers' preparedness must be given
to the late Commandant-General Piet J. Joubert, who was the head of the
Transvaal War Department for many years. General Joubert, or "Old Piet,"
as he was called by the Boers, to distinguish him from the many other
Jouberts in the country, was undoubtedly a great military leader in his
younger days, but he was almost seventy years old when he was called upon
to lead his people against the army of Great Britain, and at that age very
few men are capable of great mental or physical exertion. There was no
greater patriot in the Transvaal than he, and no one who desired the
absolute independence of his country more sincerely than the old general;
yet his heart was not in the fighting. Like Kruger, he was a man of peace,
and to his dying day he believed that the war might have been avoided
easily. Unlike Kruger, he clung to the idea that the war, having been
forced upon them, should be ended as speedily as possible, and without
regard to the loss of national interests. Joubert valued the lives of the
burghers more highly than a clause in a treaty, and rather than see his
countrymen slain in battle he was willing to make concessions to those who
harassed his Government.

Joubert was one of the few public men in the Transvaal who firmly believed
that the differences between the two countries would be amicably adjusted,
and he constantly opposed the measures for arming the country which were
brought before him. The large armament was secured by him, it is true, but
the Volksraads compelled him to purchase the arms and ammunition. If
Joubert had been a man who loved war he would have secured three times as
great a quantity of war material as there was in the country when the war
was begun; but he was distinctly a man who loved peace. He constantly
allowed his sentiments to overrule his judgment of what was good for his
country, and the result of that line of action was that at the beginning
of hostilities there were more Boer guns in Europe and on the ocean than
there were in the Transvaal.

General