became most acute. Again the Boer women
shouldered the burden, and in a thousand different ways relieved the
suffering of those who were the innocent victims of the war. Subscription
lists were opened and the wealthy Boers contributed liberally to the fund
for the distressed. Depots where the needy could secure food and clothing
were established, while a soup-kitchen where Mrs. Peter Maritz Botha, one
of the wealthiest women in the Republics, stood behind a table and
distributed food to starving men and women, was a veritable blessing to
hundreds of needy foreigners. In Johannesburg, Boer women searched through
the poorest quarters of the city for families in need of food or medicine
and never a needy individual was neglected. Among the few thousand British
subjects who remained behind there were many who were in dire straits, but
Boer women made no distinctions between friend and enemy when there was an
opportunity for performing a charitable deed. Nor was their charity
limited to civilians and those who were neutral in their sentiments with
regard to the war. When the British prisoners of war were confined in the
racecourse at Pretoria the Boer women sent many a waggon-load of fruit,
luxuries, and reading matter to the soldiers who had been sent against
them to deprive them of that which they esteemed most--the independence of
their country. The spirit which animated the women was never better
exemplified than by the action of a little Boer girl of about ten years
who approached a British prisoner on the platform of the station at
Kroonstaad and gave him a bottle of milk which she had kept carefully
concealed under her apron. The soldier hardly had time to thank her for
her gift before she turned and ran away from him as rapidly as she had the
strength. It seemed as if she loved him as a man in distress, but feared
him as a soldier, and hated him as the enemy of her country.

Besides assisting in the care of the wounded, the baking of bread for the
burghers, and giving aid to the destitute, the women of the farms were
obliged to attend to the flocks and herds which were left in their charge
when the fathers, husbands, and brothers went to the front to fight. All
the laborious duties of the farm were performed by the women, and it was
common to witness a woman at work in the fields or driving a long
ox-waggon along the roads. When the tide of war changed and the enemy
drove the burghers to the soil of the Republics the