Captain Aylmer Haldane How We Escaped From Pretoria (1901) xii + 231pp + fold-out map at rear.

xii + 231pp + fold-out map at rear.

Pictorial cloth with author and companion hiding in the grass in foreground, and Boer guard, smoking his pipe, silhouetted in the background.

29 black & white illustrations. All plates present.

Second (new) edition, revised and enlarged with numerous illustrations, plans and map.

A fine copy.

'After the battle of Elandslaagte, Captain Haldane, who had been wounded in the engagement, was sent to Pietermaritzburg to recoup; in the meantime his regiment was shut up in Ladysmith. After his recovery he was attached to the Royal Dublin Fusiliers, and receiving orders to reconnoiter with a detachment on the armored train, was attacked by the Boers, and captured, at the same time as Mr. Winston Churchill. The captives appear to have been kindly treated, and the author remarks, "Throughout the journey to the Boer metropolis we met with nothing but the greatest consideration." Nevertheless, he did not form an exalted opinion of "the pious, God-fearing Boers," and says, "These very men, who are almost as full of apt texts as the great Cromwell's Ironsides, are far from acting up to the religious sentiments they profess. They are singularly untruthful, eminently boastful, lamentably immoral, and their ideas of meum and tuum would do credit to a London pickpocket." The prisoners were taken to the Staats Model School at Pretoria, and Churchill, Brockie, and Haldane made many plans to escape, which were doomed to failure, but eventually Churchill got away on December 12th; the others were observed by a sentry, and dared not make the attempt, but later on they managed to hide themselves under the floorings of the prison, and being joined by Le Mesurier, they disappeared on February 26, 1900, to the consternation and mystification of their guards, who never supposed they were hiding in the building. They were supplied with necessities from time to time by their fellow officers who were in secret, but found no means of escape till March 16th, when all the prisoners were removed and the building deserted, when, finding the coast clear, they succeeded in getting outside, eluded by few passers by, and were soon on the veld. The officers were hidden by some friends amongst bales of wool, which were put on a truck attached to a passenger train bound for Delagoa Bay, which took them safely across the border.'