in the Zulu war,
and had the Order of the Commander of the Bath conferred upon him by the
Queen. Colonel Ferreira was at the head of a commando at Mafeking. Paul
Dietzch, the military secretary of General Meyer, fought under the British
flag in the Gaika and several other native wars.

It was not only the extremely old and the extremely young who went to war;
it was a transfer of the entire population of the two Republics to the
frontiers, and no condition or position was sufficient excuse to remain
behind. The professional man of Pretoria and Johannesburg was in a laager
which was adjacent to a laager of farthest-back veld-farmers. Lawyers and
physicians, photographers and grocers, speculators and sextons, judges and
schoolmasters, schoolboys and barkeepers--all who were burghers locked
their desks and offices and journeyed to the front. Even clergymen closed
their houses of worship in the towns and remained among the commandos to
pray and preach for those who did the fighting. The members of the
Volksraads, who brought on the war by their ultimatum, were among the
first in the field, and foremost in attacking the soldiers of their enemy.
Students in European universities, who hastened home when war-clouds were
gathering, went shoulder to shoulder into battle with the backwoodsman,
the Boer takhaar. There was no pride among them; no class distinction
which prevented a farmer from speaking to a millionaire. A graduate of
Cambridge had as his boon companion for five months a farmer who thought
the earth a square, and imagined the United States to be a political
division of Australia.

[Illustration: BOERS WATCHING THE FIGHT AT DUNDEE]

The Boer who was bred in a city or town good-naturedly referred to his
country cousin as a "takhaar"--a man with grizzly beard and unkempt hair.
It was a good descriptive term, and the takhaar was not offended when it
was applied to him. The takhaar was the modern type of the old voortrekker
Boer who, almost a hundred years ago, trekked north from Cape Colony, and
after overcoming thousands of difficulties settled in the present Boer
country. He was a religious, big-hearted countryman of the kind who would
suspect a stranger until he proved himself worthy of trust. After that
period was passed the takhaar would walk the veld in order that you might
ride his horse. If he could not speak your language he would repeat a
dozen times such words as he knew, meanwhile offering to you coffee,
m