"Breadstuffs are obtained, like groceries, by commandeering the stocks of various merchants and private persons."
Shortly after this report was published, the special correspondent of Reuter's Agency announced that a further reduction in the supply of breadstuffs had taken place. "We are now able to receive only four ounces daily," he continued. "This, however, has been to some extent compensated by the issue of sowan porridge to whites as well as blacks. We have still a fair supply of fresh vegetables, which the Chinese are retailing at famine prices. As vegetables, however, are perishable commodities they are still cheap in comparison with whisky, which is 25_s._ a bottle. Eggs are 18_s._ a dozen, fowls 20_s._ each, jam 2_s._ 6_d_. a small tin."
The same correspondent, alas! remarks in a despatch of somewhat later date that "excellent brawn is now being made, and is eaten by both whites and blacks. It is made from ox and horse hides." He adds with a brevity which has a good deal of pathos and humour in it, that "the garrison is very cheerful, very dry, and very hungry." Most of the necessarily brief despatches from Mafeking in the most trying days of the siege have a spice of humour and a good deal of pathos in them. On May 3rd, Lady Sarah Wilson cabled the following laconic message to Lady Georgiana Curzon:--"Mafeking, May 3rd.--Breakfast consisted of horse sausages; lunch, minced mule and curried locusts. Well." "There is great demand for horse side and brawn," says Reuter's special correspondent on May 5th. But perhaps the most significant, and certainly the most impressive, message of all was that of Major Baillie, dated May 1st, which will surely be remembered when many incidents of the Boer War are forgotten:--
Those of us who sit at home at our entire or comparative ease can scarcely comprehend the full meaning of these messages, nor of the heroism of the men who, sorely tried by hunger and disease, were keeping up the flag with such stern, immovable determination. In the town, hunger and sickness; outside the town, an enemy so bitterly unscrupulous as to observe no civilized conditions of warfare, and whose leaders did not scruple to fire on women, children, and sick men--here was a situation in which surely nobody but the most courageous could have preserved a cheerful confidence. How that confidence struck Baden-Powell may be judged from the despatch which he sent to Lord Roberts on the 200th day of the siege. "After 200 days' siege," he said, "I desire to bring to your lordship's notice the exceptionally good spirit of loyalty that pervades all classes of this garrison. The patience of everybody in Mafeking in making the best of things under the long strain of anxiety, hardship, and privation is beyond all praise, and a revelation to me. The men, half of whom are unaccustomed to the use of arms, have adapted themselves to their duties with the greatest zeal, readiness, and pluck, and the devotion of the women is remarkable. With such a spirit our organization runs like clockwork, and I have every hope it will pull us successfully through."