A few preliminary pages of personal history I offer to those who followed me either in thought or deed during the Anglo-Boer War. My ancestors were Germans; my grandfather was born in the South. About the year 1820 he, along with two brothers, bade farewell to the land of his nativity and emigrated to South Africa. They found a home for themselves in the neighbourhood of Port Elizabeth, and there they settled as farmers. Two of the brothers married women of Dutch extraction; one died a bachelor. A small village, Humansdorp, situated near to Port Elizabeth, was the birth-place of my father....

A few preliminary pages of personal history I offer to those who followed me either in thought or deed during the Anglo-Boer War. My ancestors were Germans; my grandfather was born in the South. About the year 1820 he, along with two brothers, bade f

Six feet water in the hold, sir! That would not have been a pleasant announcement to the captain of the 'Aurora' at any time, but its unpleasantness was vastly increased by the fact that it greeted him near the termination of what had been, up to that point of time, an exceedingly prosperous voyage. "Are you sure, Davis?" asked the captain; "try again." He gave the order under the influence of that feeling which is styled "hoping against hope," and himself accompanied the ship's carpenter to see it obeyed. "Six feet two inches," was the result of this investigation. The vessel, a large...