Los Angeles herald., 1907-04-15
HOW DAN BURKE ESCAPED
FROM J0'BERe
Patent Leather shoes and a Twenty-
Mile Tramp-clears as Currency
Prove Excellent Medium
Of Exchange


For hundreds of miles along what
seemed like an endless lane of barbed
wire fences the globe-circling vaude-
william trudged through the heart of
the land for which England and the
Beers were fighting. Half prostrated
by the heat of the days and half frozen
at night he paced the distance from
johannesburg in the Transvaal to
Bloemfontein in the orange Free State.
1.-THE picture is ludcrous enough to
look back at" he says, but at the
time 1t was a heart-breaking expert
ence.
II had been playing at the Empire
in Johannesburg, or, as they call 1t
there, Jo-berg. At the end of twelve
weeks engagement the theater closed.
Jo-berg was still in the hands of the
Beers, but the British were drawing
near and 1t was considered only mat
ter of days until the town would be
captured.
provisions were scarce and there
was already much suffering, for the
Beers seized everything that might be
useful to their army and the civilian
had to go without With hundreds of
others 1 sought every opportunity to
getb away. Jo-berg was crowded with
foreigners who had no interest in the
fighting. They were anxious to leave,
but the trains were requisitioned by
the military authorities and citizen pas
sengers were not carried on any terms.
"At last, when bombardment
seemed imminent, train was made up
to carry the women out of the city. I
secured passage for the girls who were
in my act. Molly Moller, who is now
playing with me at the Orpheum, was
one of them. But for myself there was
no such luck. 1t was a case of stay
or walk. / walked.
"a friend Offered to secure me safe
passage through the Boer lines If
would carry message to a former Of
fetal of the Orange Free State at
Bloemfontein. agreed and he guided
me to point about twenty miles out
Of Jo-berg. There he set me down with
two days grub to hoof 1t the rest OF
the way. Three days after that, wnen
I struck the railway under British pro-
lection, had been twenty-four hours
without food or drink Not a Boer
farmer would give me the least aid.
Not bite or a drink to one who spoke
the English tongue, and l could speak
nothing else.
"Yet at that same time had hidden
in my shoe a letter from a prominent
officer of the Transvaal army to an
official of the Orange Free state Had
I been able to proclaim myself mes
senger for their own government no
doubt their treatment would have been
reversed, but 1 had accepted the mes
Usage under promise of secrecy. L have
often wondered what the contents of
that letter were and why my Boer
friend sent it by me instead of by their
regular messengers. Perhaps 1t was
intended to fall into the hands of the
English. But 1t did not. delivered
it safely in Bloemfontein.
AFTER 1 reached the railroad things
were better, for at Intervals within
sight of each other Lord Kitchener had
established blockhouses for the rail-
Way guards and connected them with
barbed wire defenses. So down this
endless lane of barbed wire, strung
with empty beef cans, 1 wandered,
weary and footsore, but no longer
every few feet of those fences was
decorated with the Armour trademark
on an empty tin-not the small retail
size, but the big army tins almost as
big as oil cans. The railway guards
discovered that these furnished an ex-
cellent means of signalling between the
posts. They were capable of conveying
a variety of messages, either of warn
ing or salutation. AS we approached
blockhouse we We're challenged by the
sentry. Having been passed our COM
ing was signalled to the next post by
the barbed wire-beef can telegraph.
And so we marched from Jo-berg to
Bloemfontein.
"These railway guards had a lone
some and dangerous time OF 1t. They
were in detachments of from two to as
many as fifty at some of the important
bridges and culVertS. Their only diver
sion was fighting, and they very sell
dom got a real fight The Beers fought
H.. 20 c,i Ctrapninp drift
drifts are dry watercourses with per-
pendicular banks and fiat bottoms, and
furnish the best kind of natural forti-
fication-creeping up drift party or
Beers would surprise one or two de-
tached men, kill and strip them of
uniform and accoutrements and hurry
back to safety along the hidden
pathway.
"During the latter part Of the war,
after the capture of Cronje's army by
Lord Roberts, the Beers had no regu-
lar plan of campaign. Their efforts
were confined to tearing up the rails
surprising small bodies of men on con-
voy duty and sniping the railway
guards.
"These railway guards were the sal
walton of thousands of civilians VINO,
like myself, were escaping from the
country. They fed us and gave us
SnGllGf
thousand dollars in gold In my belt,
and although / was known to many OF
the persons whom i met and overlook
on the road who must have surmised
that / carried money, 1 was not once
molested That was due to the protec-
ton of British bayonets And this,
mind you, in the heart of country
where one was liable to meet detach-
ment of either army at any moment,
among men who daily and hourly dis
cussed the advisability of robbery and
some of whom had made their living
by such methods.
For three days / was in the COM
pany of a pair of rogues who were de-
iiberately planning to hold up the first
man they met who appeared to have
money. But they never did. The fear
of those khaki-clad dispensers of
summary justice was too strong upon
them.
"I left Jo-berg wearing a pair of
patent leather shoes. But before the
road was half covered these were worn
to less than shadows. Then l traded
a cigar for pair of army boots. Cigars
were handy currency. A box of the
rankest stinkadores cost me ga (near-
l., eOoN In Io-hapC nhau Kuaya Of IN