The civilians here cannot say enough for the way Mr. Cecil Rhodes worked during the siege; and his thoughtfulness and consideration for the women and children were beyond all praise. At one time he had many hundreds of them in safety down one of the mines, 1000 feet below the surface, and he took infinite pains to send them down suitable supplies; they were in fairly airy chambers, and had a good supply of electric light, &c. Of course the military people are not so enthusiastic about his assistance, but, naturally, they would not appreciate a man who always liked to have his own way, and do what he thought best--and who did it too!
The first thing the Boers did was to seize the waterworks, some miles from the town, and cut off the water supply; but the mine-owners came to the rescue by pumping water from a good spring in one of their mines that had caused them years of annoyance by rising and making the working of that mine a great difficulty; so the water question never caused them much trouble, though the Boers were constantly trying to damage the pumping machinery.
Though the water supply was fair the food supplies were very low; and a rich family, whom I know, told me they were intensely grateful to a neighbour who sent them a quarter of a bottle of port wine and half a packet of cornflour as a Christmas present. They were at that time drawing half their ration of meat in horseflesh, and, though some people say they could never touch it, I believe it was not at all bad, and one girl told me that a little donkey was "quite nice."
A good story is told of a colonel who was then up here. One night at mess he said, "Gentlemen, I am sorry to say we were only able to draw half our ration in beef to-day; this joint I am carving is beef, at the other end of the table the joint is horse: if any one would prefer to try it, perhaps he will carve for himself." No one got up, so the Colonel had to carve (small helpings) for all the mess. After they had finished an orderly came and whispered to him, and he said, "Oh, gentlemen, I am sorry to find I have made a mistake; I find this was the horse, and the cow is still at the other end of the table!"
There was so much sickness in the town that the doctors had a terrible time. In most cases it was suitable food rather than medicine that was needed, especially amongst the little children; and, besides the sickness, there were a great many wounded constantly being brought in from the trenches, or from skirmishes, and every available building was turned into a hospital.