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+The Project Gutenberg eBook, Campaign Pictures of the War in South Africa
+(1899-1900), by A. G. Hales
+
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+
+
+
+Title: Campaign Pictures of the War in South Africa (1899-1900)
+       Letters from the Front
+
+
+Author: A. G. Hales
+
+
+
+Release Date: June 25, 2005  [eBook #16131]
+[Date last updated: June 9, 2006]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+
+***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CAMPAIGN PICTURES OF THE WAR IN
+SOUTH AFRICA (1899-1900)***
+
+
+E-text prepared by Jonathan Ingram, Rudy Ketterer, and the Project
+Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team (https://www.pgdp.net)
+
+
+
+CAMPAIGN PICTURES OF THE WAR IN SOUTH AFRICA (1899-1900)
+
+Letters from the Front
+
+by
+
+A. G. HALES
+
+Special Correspondent of the "Daily News"
+
+Cassell and Company, Limited
+London, Paris, New York & Melbourne
+
+1901
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+
+
+Dedication.
+
+
+This book, such as it is, is dedicated to the man whose kindliness of heart
+and generous journalistic instincts lifted me from the unknown, and placed
+me where I had a chance to battle with the best men in my profession. He
+was the man who found Archibald Forbes, the most brilliant, accurate, and
+entertaining of all war correspondents. What he did for that splendid
+genius let Forbes' memoirs tell; what he did for me I will tell myself. He
+gave me the chance I had looked for for twenty years, and the dearest name
+in my memory to-day is the name of
+
+
+                  SIR JOHN ROBINSON,
+
+            Manager of the _Daily News_, London.
+
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+                                                   PAGE
+WITH THE AUSTRALIANS.
+  AUSTRALIA ON THE MARCH                             1
+  WITH THE AUSTRALIANS                               6
+  A PRISONER OF WAR                                 15
+  "STOPPING A FEW"                                  29
+  AUSTRALIA AT THE WAR                              38
+  AUSTRALIA ON THE MOVE                             48
+  SLINGERSFONTEIN                                   60
+  THE WEST AUSTRALIANS                              69
+
+AMONG THE BOERS.
+  IN A BOER TOWN                                    75
+  BEHIND THE SCENES                                 83
+  A BOER FIGHTING LAAGER                            90
+  THROUGH BOER GLASSES                             104
+  LIFE IN THE BOER CAMPS                           116
+
+WITH GENERAL RUNDLE.
+  BATTLE OF CONSTANTIA FARM                        127
+  WITH RUNDLE IN THE FREE STATE                    149
+  RED WAR WITH RUNDLE                              159
+  THE FREE STATERS' LAST STAND                     174
+
+CHARACTER SKETCHES IN CAMP.
+  THE CAMP LIAR                                    194
+  THE NIGGER SERVANT                               199
+  THE SOLDIER PREACHER                             207
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+PRESIDENT STEYN                                    212
+LOUIS BOTHA, COMMANDANT-GENERAL OF THE BOER ARMY   218
+WHITE FLAG TREACHERY                               224
+THE BATTLE OF MAGERSFONTEIN                        229
+SCOUTS AND SCOUTING: DRISCOLL, KING OF SCOUTS      242
+HUNTING AND HUNTED                                 253
+WITH THE BASUTOS                                   264
+MAGERSFONTEIN AVENGED                              280
+THE CONDUCT OF THE WAR                             289
+HOME AGAIN                                         299
+
+
+
+
+
+
+              Australia's Appeal to England.
+
+
+
+          We grow weary waiting, England,
+            For the summons that never comes--
+          For the blast of the British bugles
+            And the throb of the British drums.
+          Our hearts grow sore and sullen
+            As year by year rolls by,
+          And your cold, contemptuous actions
+            Give your fervent words the lie.
+
+          Are we only an English market,
+            Held dear for the sake of trade?
+          Or are we a part of the Empire,
+            Close welded as hilt and blade?
+          If we are to cleave together
+            As mother and son through life,
+          Give us our share of the burden,
+            Let us stand with you in the strife.
+
+          If we are to share your glory,
+            Let the sons whom the South has bred
+          Lie side by side on your battlefields
+            With England's heroes dead.
+          A nation is never a nation
+            Worthy of pride or place
+          Till the mothers have sent their firstborn
+            To look death on the field in the face.
+
+          Are we only an English market,
+            Held dear for the sake of trade?
+          Or are we a part of the Empire
+            Close welded as hilt and blade?
+          If so, let us share your dangers,
+            Let the glory we boast be real,
+          Let the boys of the South fight with you,
+            Let our children taste cold steel.
+
+          Do you think we are chicken-hearted?
+            Do you count us devoid of pride?
+          Just try us in deadly earnest,
+            And see how our boys can ride.
+          We are sick of your empty praises!
+            If the mother is proud of her son,
+          Let him do some deed on a hard-fought field,
+            Then boast what he has done.
+
+          A nation is never a nation
+            Worthy of pride or place
+          Till the mothers have sent their firstborn
+            To look death on the field in the face.
+          Australia is calling to England,
+            Let England answer the call;
+          There are smiles for those who come back to us,
+            And tears for those who may fall.
+
+          Bridle to bridle our sons will ride
+            With the best that Britain has bred,
+          And all we ask is an open field
+            And a soldier's grave for our dead.
+
+
+
+I have decided to enclose these verses in my book because some critics
+          have pronounced me anti-English in my sentiments. Heaven alone
+          knows why; yet the above poem was written and published by me in
+          Australia just before war was declared between England and the
+          Republics, at a time when all Australia considered it very
+          probable that we should have to fight one of the big European
+          Powers as well as the Boers.
+
+                                                                A. G. HALES.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+                      AUSTRALIA ON THE MARCH.
+
+                                                       BELMONT BATTLEFIELD.
+
+
+At two o'clock on the morning of Wednesday, the 6th of the month, the
+reveille sounded, and the Australians commenced their preparations for the
+march to join Methuen's army. By 4 a.m. the mounted rifles led the way out
+of camp, and the toilsome march over rough and rocky ground commenced. The
+country was terribly rough as we drove the transports up and over the
+Orange River, and rougher still in the low kopjes on the other side. The
+heat was simply blistering, but the Australians did not seem to mind it to
+any great extent; they were simply feverish to get on to the front, but
+they had to hang back and guard the transports.
+
+At last the hilly country faded behind us. We counted upon pushing on
+rapidly, but the African mules were a sorry lot, and could make but little
+headway in the sandy tracks. Still, there was no rest for the men, because
+at intervals one of Remington's scouts would turn up at a flying gallop,
+springing apparently from nowhere, out of the womb of the wilderness, to
+inform us that flying squads of Boers were hanging round us. But so
+carefully watchful were the Remingtons that the Boers had no chance of
+surprising us. No sooner did the scouts inform us of their approach in any
+direction than our rifles swung forward ready to give them a hearty
+Australian reception. This made the march long and toilsome, though we
+never had a chance to fire a shot. At 5.30 we marched with all our
+transports into Witteput, the wretched little mules being the only
+distressed portion of the contingent.
+
+At Witteput the news reached us that a large party of the enemy had managed
+to pass between General Methuen's men and ourselves, and had invested
+Belmont, out of which place the British troops had driven them a few weeks
+previously. We had no authentic news concerning this movement. Our
+contingent spread out on the hot sand at Witteput, panting for a drop of
+rain from the lowering clouds that hung heavily overhead. Yet hot, tired,
+and thirsty as we were, we yet found time to look with wonder at the sky
+above us. The men from the land of the Southern Cross are used to gorgeous
+sunsets, but never had we looked upon anything like this. Great masses of
+coal-black clouds frowned down upon us, flanked by fiery crimson cloud
+banks, that looked as if they would rain blood, whilst the atmosphere was
+dense enough to half-stifle one. Now and again the thunder rolled out
+majestically, and the lightning flashed from the black clouds into the red,
+like bayonets through smoke banks.
+
+Yet we had not long to wait and watch, for within half an hour after our
+arrival the Colonel galloped down into our midst just as the evening ration
+was being given out. He held a telegram aloft, and the stillness that fell
+over the camp was so deep that each man could hear his neighbour's heart
+beat. Then the Colonel's voice cut the stillness like a bugle call. "Men,
+we are needed at Belmont; the Boers are there in force, and we have been
+sent for to relieve the place. I'll want you in less than two hours." It
+was then the men showed their mettle. Up to their feet they leapt like one
+man, and they gave the Colonel a cheer that made the sullen, halting mules
+kick in their harness. "We are ready now, Colonel, we'll eat as we march,"
+and the "old man" smiled, and gave the order to fall in, and they fell in,
+and as darkness closed upon the land they marched out of Witteput to the
+music of the falling rain and the thunder of heaven's artillery.
+
+All night long it was march, halt, and "Bear a hand, men," for those thrice
+accursed mules failed us at every pinch. In vain the niggers plied the
+whips of green hide, vain their shouts of encouragement, or painfully
+shrill anathemas; the mules had the whip hand of us, and they kept it. But,
+in spite of it all, in the chilly dawn of the African morning, our fellows,
+with their shoulders well back, and heads held high, marched into Belmont,
+with every man safe and sound, and every waggon complete.
+
+Then the Gordons turned out and gave us a cheer, for they had passed us in
+the train as we crossed the line above Witteput, and they knew, those
+veterans from Indian wars, what our raw Volunteers had done; they had been
+on their feet from two o'clock on Wednesday morning until five o'clock of
+the following day, with the heat at 122 in the shade, and bitter was their
+wrath when they learnt that the Boer spies, who swarm all over the country,
+had heralded their coming, so that the enemy had only waited to plant a few
+shells into Belmont before disappearing into the hills beyond. That was the
+cruel part of it. They did not mind the fatigue, they did not worry about
+the thirst or the hunger, but to be robbed of a chance to show the world
+what they could do in the teeth of the enemy was gall and wormwood to them,
+and the curses they sent after the discreet Boer were weird, quaint,
+picturesque, and painfully prolific.
+
+We are lying with the Gordons now, waiting for the Boers to come along and
+try to take Belmont, and our fellows and the "Scotties" are particularly
+good chums, and it is the cordial wish of both that they may some day give
+the enemy a taste of the bayonet together.
+
+
+
+
+
+                          WITH THE AUSTRALIANS.
+
+                                                                   BELMONT.
+
+
+Australia has had her first taste of war, not a very great or very
+important performance, but we have buried our dead, and that at least binds
+us more closely to the Motherland than ever before. The Queenslanders, the
+wild riders, and the bushmen of the north-eastern portion of the continent
+have been the first to pay their tribute to nationhood with the life blood
+of her sons, two of whom--Victor James and McLeod--were buried by their
+comrades on the scene of action a couple of days ago, whilst half a dozen
+others, including Lieutenant Aide, fell more or less seriously wounded. The
+story of the fight is simply told; there is no necessity for any wild
+vapouring in regard to Australian courage, no need for hysterical praise.
+Our fellows simply did what they were told to do in a quiet and workmanlike
+manner, just as we who know them expected that they would; we are all proud
+of them, and doubly proud that the men in the fight with them were our
+cousins from Canada.
+
+The most noteworthy fact about the engagement is to be gleaned by noting
+that the Australians adopted Boer tactics, and so escaped the slaughter
+that has so often fallen to the lot of the British troops when attacking
+similar positions. Before describing the fight it may be as well to give
+some slight idea of the disposition of the opposing forces. Our troops held
+the railway line all the way from Cape Town to Modder River. At given
+distances, or at points of strategic importance, strong bodies of men are
+posted to keep the Boers from raiding, or from interfering with the railway
+or telegraph lines. Such a force, consisting of Munster Fusiliers, two guns
+of R.H. Artillery, the Canadians, and the Queenslanders, were posted at
+Belmont under Colonel Pilcher. The enemy had no fixed camping ground.
+Mounted on hardy Basuto ponies, carrying no provisions but a few mealies
+and a little biltong, armed only with rifles, they sweep incessantly from
+place to place, and are an everlasting source of annoyance to us. At one
+moment they may be hovering in the kopjes around us at Enslin, waiting to
+get a chance to sneak into the kopjes that immediately overlook our camp,
+but thanks to the magnificent scouting qualities of the Victorian Mounted
+Rifles, they have never been able to do so. During the night they disperse,
+and take up their abode on surrounding farms as peaceful tillers of the
+soil. In a day or so they organise again, and swoop down on some other
+place, such as Belmont. Their armies, under men like Cronje or Joubert,
+seldom move from strongly-entrenched positions.
+
+The people I am referring to as reivers are farmers recruited by local
+leaders, and are a particularly dangerous class of people to deal with, as
+they know every inch of this most deceptive country. As soon as they are
+whipped they make off to wives and home, and meet the scouts with a bland
+smile and outstretched hand. It is no use trying to get any information out
+of them, for no man living can look so much like an unmitigated fool when
+he wants to as the ordinary, every-day farmer of the veldt. I know Chinamen
+exceptionally well, I have had an education in the ways of the children of
+Confucius; but no Chinaman that I have come in contact with could ever
+imitate the half-idiotic smile, the patient, ox-like placidity of
+countenance, the meek, religious look of holy resignation to the will of
+Providence which comes naturally to the ordinary Boer farmer. It is this
+faculty which made our very clever Army Intelligence people rank the farmer
+of the veldt as a fool. Yet, if I am any judge, and I have known men in
+many lands, our friend of the veldt is as clever and as crafty as any
+Oriental I have yet mixed with.
+
+Now for the Australian fight. On the day before Christmas, Colonel Pilcher,
+at Belmont, got wind of the assemblage of a considerable Boer force at a
+place 30 miles away, called Sunnyside Farm, and he determined to try to
+attack it before the enemy could get wind of his intention. To this end he
+secured every nigger for some miles around--which proved his good sense, as
+the niggers are all in the pay of the Boers, no matter how loyal they may
+pretend to be to the British, a fact which the British would do well to
+take heed of, for it has cost them pretty dearly already. On Christmas Eve
+he started out, taking two guns of the Royal Navy Artillery, a couple of
+Maxims, all the Queenslanders, and a few hundred Canadians. Colonel
+Pilcher's force numbered in all about 600 men. He marched swiftly all
+night, and got to Sunnyside Farm in good time Christmas Day. The Boers had
+not a ghost of an idea that our men were near them, and were completely
+beaten at their own game, the surprise party being complete. The enemy were
+found in a laager in a strong position in some rather steep kopjes, and it
+was at once evident that they were expecting strong reinforcements from
+surrounding farms. Colonel Pilcher at once extended his forces so as to try
+to surround the kopjes. Whilst this was going on, Lieutenant Aide, with
+four Queensland troopers, was sent to the far left of what was supposed to
+be the Boer position. His orders were to give notice of any attempt at
+retreat on the part of the enemy. He did his work well. Getting close to
+the kopje, he saw a number of the enemy slinking off, and at once
+challenged them. As he did so a dozen Boers dashed out of the kopje, and
+Aide opened fire on them, which caused the Boers to fire a volley at him.
+Lieutenant Aide fell from his horse with two bullets in his body; one went
+through the fleshy part of his stomach, entering his body sideways, the
+other went into his thigh. A trooper named McLeod was shot through the
+heart, and fell dead. Both the other troopers were wounded. Trooper Rose
+caught a horse, and hoisted his lieutenant into the saddle, and sent him
+out of danger.
+
+Meantime the R.H. Battery, taking range from Lieutenant Aide's fire, opened
+out on the enemy. Their guns put a great fear into the Boers, and a general
+bolt set in. The Boers fired as they cleared, and if our fellows had been
+formed up in the style usual to the British army in action, we should have
+suffered heavily; but the Queensland bushmen had dropped behind cover, and
+soon had complete possession of the kopjes; another trooper named Victor
+Jones was shot through the brain, and fourteen others were more or less
+badly wounded. The Boers then surrendered. We took 40 prisoners, and found
+about 14 dead Boers on the ground, besides a dozen wounded. They were all
+Cape Dutch, no Transvaalers being found in their ranks. We secured 40,000
+rounds of their ammunition, 300 Martini rifles, and only one Mauser rifle,
+which was in the possession of the Boer commander. After destroying all
+that we took, we moved on, and had a look at some of the farms near by, as
+from some of the documents found in camp it was certain that the whole
+district was a perfect nest of rebellion. Quite a little store of arms and
+ammunition was discovered by this means, and the occupants of the farms
+were therefore transported to Belmont. Our fellows carried the little
+children and babies in their arms all the way, and marched into Belmont
+singing, with the little ones on their shoulders. Every respect was shown
+to the women, old and young, and to the old men, but the young fellows were
+closely guarded all the time. The Canadians did not lose a single man,
+neither did any of the others except the Queenslanders.
+
+Another Boer commando, about 1,000 strong, with two batteries of artillery,
+is now hovering in the ranges away to the north-west of Enslin, but Colonel
+Hoad is not likely to be tempted out to meet them, since his orders are to
+hold Enslin against attack. However, should they venture to make a dash for
+Enslin, they will get a pretty bad time, as the Australians there are keen
+for a fight.
+
+Concerning farming, it is an unknown quantity here, as we in Australia
+understand it. These people simply squat down wherever they can find a
+natural catchment for water. There is no clearing to be done, as the land
+is quite devoid of timber. They put nigger labour on, and build a
+farmhouse. These farmhouses are much better built than those which the
+average pioneer farmer in Australia owns. They make no attempt at
+adornment, but build plain, substantial houses, containing mostly about six
+rooms. The roofs are mostly flat, and the frontages plain to ugliness. They
+do no fencing, except where they go in for ostrich breeding. When they farm
+for feathers they fence with wire about six feet in height. This kind of
+farming is very popular with the better class of Boers, as it entails very
+little labour, and no outlay beyond the initial expense. They raise just
+enough meal to keep themselves, but do not farm for the market. They breed
+horses and cattle; the horses are a poor-looking lot, as the Boers do not
+believe much in blood. They never ride or work mares, but use them as brood
+stock. This is a bad plan, as young and immature mares breed early on the
+veldt, and throw weedy stock. Their cattle, however, are attended to on
+much better lines, and most of the beef that I have seen would do credit to
+any station in Australia, or any American ranch. They mostly raise a few
+sheep and goats; the sheep are a poor lot, the wool is of a very inferior
+class, and the mutton poor. I don't know much about goats, so will pass
+them, though I very much doubt if any Australian squatter would give them
+grass room.
+
+On most of the farms a small orchard is found enclosed in stone walls. Here
+again the ignorance of the Boers is very marked; the fruit is of poor
+quality, though the variety is large. Thus, one finds in these orchards
+pears, apples, grapes, plums, pomegranates, peaches, quinces, apricots, and
+almonds. The fruit is harsh, small, and flavourless, owing to bad pruning,
+want of proper manure, and good husbandry generally. The Boer seems to
+think that he has done all that is required of him when he has planted a
+tree; all that follows he leaves to nature, and he would much rather sit
+down and pray for a beautiful harvest than get up and work for it. He is a
+great believer in the power of prayer. He prays for a good crop of fruit;
+if it comes he exalts himself and takes all the credit; if the crop fails
+he folds his hands and remarks that it was God's will that things should so
+come to pass. He knocks all the work he can out of his niggers, but does
+precious little himself. In stature he is mostly tall, thin, and active. He
+moves with a quick, shuffling gait, which is almost noiseless. Some of his
+women folk are beautiful, while others are fat and clumsy, and are never
+likely to have their portraits hung on the walls of the Royal Academy.
+
+
+
+
+
+                            A PRISONER OF WAR.
+
+                                                     BLOEMFONTEIN HOSPITAL.
+
+
+I little fancied when I sat at my ease in my tent in the British camp that
+my next epistle would be written from a hospital as a prisoner, but such is
+the case, and, after all, I am far more inclined to be thankful than to
+growl at my luck. Let me tell the story, for it is typical of this peculiar
+country, and still more peculiar war. I had been writing far into the
+night, and had left the letter ready for post next day. Then, with a clear
+conscience, I threw myself on my blankets, satisfied that I was ready for
+what might happen next. Things were going to happen, but though the night
+was big with fate there was no warning to me in the whispering wind. Some
+men would have heard all sorts of sounds on such a night, but I am not
+built that way I suppose. Anyway, I heard nothing until, half an hour
+before dawn, a voice jarred my ear with the news that "there was something
+on, and I'd better fly round pretty sharp if I did not mean to miss it."
+
+By the light of my lantern I saddled my horse, and snatched a hasty cup of
+coffee and a mouthful of biscuit, and as the little band of Tasmanians
+moved from Rensburg I rode with them. Where they were going, or what their
+mission, I did not know, but I guessed it was to be no picnic. The quiet,
+resolute manner of the officers, the hushed voices, the set, stern faces of
+the young soldiers, none of whom had ever been under fire before, all told
+me that there was blood in the air, so I asked no questions, and sat tight
+in my saddle. As the daylight broke over the far-stretching veldt, I saw
+that two other correspondents were with the party, viz., Reay, of the
+Melbourne _Herald_, and Lambie, poor, ill-fated Lambie, of the
+_Melbourne Age_. For a couple of hours we trotted along without
+incident of any kind, then we halted at a farmhouse, the name of which I
+have forgotten. There we found Captain Cameron encamped with the rest of
+the Tasmanians, and after a short respite the troops moved outward again,
+Captain Cameron in command; we had about eighty men, all of whom were
+mounted.
+
+As we rode off I heard the order given for every man to "sit tight and keep
+his eyes open." Then our scouts put spurs to their horses and dashed away
+on either wing, skirting the kopjes and screening the main body, and so for
+another hour we moved without seeing or hearing anything to cause us
+trouble. By this time we had got into a kind of huge basin, the kopjes were
+all round us, but the veldt was some miles in extent. I knew at a glance
+that if the Boers were in force our little band was in for a bad time, as
+an enemy hidden in those hills could watch our every movement on the plain,
+note just where we intended to try and pass through the chain of hills, and
+attack us with unerring certainty and suddenness. All at once one of our
+scouts, who had been riding far out on our left flank, came flying in with
+the news that the enemy was in the kopjes in front of us, and he further
+added that he thought they intended to surround our party if possible.
+Captain Cameron ordered the men to split into two parties, one to move
+towards the kopjes on our right; the other to fall back and protect our
+retreat, if such a move became necessary. Mr. Lambie and I decided to move
+on with the advance party, and at a hard gallop we moved away towards a
+line of kopjes that seemed higher than any of the others in the belt. As we
+neared those hills it seemed to us that there were no Boers in possession,
+and that nothing would come of the ride after all, and we drew bridle and
+started to discuss the situation. At that time we were not far from the
+edge of some kopjes, which, though lying low, were covered with rocky
+boulders and low scrub.
+
+We had drifted a few hundred yards behind the advance party, but were a
+good distance in front of the rearguard, when a number of horsemen made a
+dash from the kopjes which we were skirting, and the rifles began to speak.
+There was no time for poetry; it was a case of "sit tight and ride hard,"
+or surrender and be made prisoners. Lambie shouted to me: "Let's make a
+dash, Hales," and we made it. The Boers were very close to us before we
+knew anything concerning their presence. Some of them were behind us, and
+some extended along the edge of the kopjes by which we had to pass to get
+to the British line in front, all of them were galloping in on us, shooting
+as they rode, and shouting to us to surrender, and, had we been wise men,
+we would have thrown up our hands, for it was almost hopeless to try and
+ride through the rain of lead that whistled around us. It was no wonder we
+were hit; the wonder to me is that we were not filled with lead, for some
+of the bullets came so close to me that I think I should know them again if
+I met them in a shop-window. We were racing by this time, Lambie's big
+chestnut mare had gained a length on my little veldt pony, and we were not
+more than a hundred yards away from the Mauser rifles that had closed in on
+us from the kopjes. A voice called in good English: "Throw up your hands,
+you d---- fools." But the galloping fever was on us both, and we only
+crouched lower on our horses' backs, and rode all the harder, for even a
+barn-yard fowl loves liberty.
+
+All at once I saw my comrade throw his hands up with a spasmodic gesture.
+He rose in his stirrups, and fairly bounded high out of his saddle, and as
+he spun round in the air I saw the red blood on the white face, and I knew
+that death had come to him sudden and sharp. Again the rifles spoke, and
+the lead was closer to me than ever a friend sticks in time of trouble, and
+I knew in my heart that the next few strides would settle things. The black
+pony was galloping gamely under my weight. Would he carry me safely out of
+that line of fire, or would he fail me? Suddenly something touched me on
+the right temple; it was not like a blow; it was not a shock; for half a
+second I was conscious. I knew I was hit; knew that the reins had fallen
+from my nerveless hands, knew that I was lying down upon my horse's back,
+with my head hanging below his throat. Then all the world went out in one
+mad whirl. Earth and heaven seemed to meet as if by magic. My horse seemed
+to rise with me, not to fall, and then--chaos.
+
+When next I knew I was still on this planet I found myself in the saddle
+again, riding between two Boers, who were supporting me in the saddle as I
+swayed from side to side. There was a halt; a man with a kindly face took
+my head in the hollow of his arm, whilst another poured water down my
+throat. Then they carried me to a shady spot beneath some shrubbery, and
+laid me gently down. One man bent over me and washed the blood that had
+dried on my face, and then carefully bound up my wounded temple. I began to
+see things more plainly--a blue sky above me; a group of rough, hardy men,
+all armed with rifles, around me. I saw that I was a prisoner, and when I
+tried to move I soon knew I was damaged.
+
+The same good-looking young fellow with the curly beard bent over me again.
+"Feel any better now, old fellow?" I stared hard at the speaker, for he
+spoke like an Englishman, and a well-educated one, too. "Yes, I'm better.
+I'm a prisoner, ain't I?" "Yes." "Are you an Englishman?" I asked. He
+laughed. "Not I," he said, "I'm a Boer born and bred, and I am the man who
+bowled you over. What on earth made you do such a fool's trick as to try
+and ride from our rifles at that distance?" "Didn't think I was welcome in
+these parts." "Don't make a jest of it, man," the Boer said gravely;
+"rather thank God you are a living man this moment. It was His hand that
+saved you; nothing else could have done so." He spoke reverently; there was
+no cant in the sentiment he uttered--his face was too open, too manly, too
+fearless for hypocrisy. "How long is it since I was knocked over?" "About
+three hours." "Is my comrade dead?" "Quite dead," the Boer replied; "death
+came instantly to him. He was shot through the brain." "Poor beggar!" I
+muttered, "and he'll have to rot on the open veldt, I suppose?"
+
+The Boer leader's face flushed angrily. "Do you take us for savages?" he
+said. "Rest easy. Your friend will get decent burial. What was his rank?"
+"War correspondent." "And your own?" "War correspondent also. My papers are
+in my pocket somewhere." "Sir," said the Boer leader, "you dress exactly
+like two British officers; you ride out with a fighting party, you try to
+ride off at a gallop under the very muzzles of our rifles when we tell you
+to surrender. You can blame no one but yourselves for this day's work." "I
+blame no man; I played the game, and am paying the penalty." Then they told
+me how poor Lambie's horse had swerved between myself and them after Lambie
+had fallen, then they saw me fall forward in the saddle, and they knew I
+was hit. A few strides later one of them had sent a bullet through my
+horse's head, and he had rolled on top of me. Yet, with it all, I had
+escaped with a graze over the right temple and a badly knocked-up shoulder.
+Truly, as the Boer said, the hand of God must have shielded me.
+
+For a day and a half I lay at that laager whilst our wounded men were
+brought in, and here I should like to say a word to the people of England.
+Our men, when wounded, are treated by the Boers with manly gentleness and
+kind consideration. When we left the laager in an open trolly, we, some
+half-dozen Australians, and about as many Boers, all wounded, were driven
+for some hours to a small hospital, the name of which I do not know. It was
+simply a farmhouse turned into a place for the wounded. On the road thither
+we called at many farms, and at every one men, women, and children came out
+to see us. Not one taunting word was uttered in our hearing, not one
+braggart sentence passed their lips. Men brought us cooling drinks, or
+moved us into more comfortable positions on the trolly. Women, with gentle
+fingers, shifted bandages, or washed wounds, or gave us little dainties
+that come so pleasant in such a time; whilst the little children crowded
+round us with tears running down their cheeks as they looked upon the
+bloodstained khaki clothing of the wounded British. Let no man or woman in
+all the British Empire whose son or husband lies wounded in the hands of
+the Boers fear for his welfare, for it is a foul slander to say that the
+Boers do not treat their wounded well. England does not treat her own men
+better than the Boers treat the wounded British, and I am writing of that
+which I have seen and know beyond the shadow of a doubt.
+
+From the little farmhouse hospital I was sent on in an ambulance train to
+the hospital at Springfontein, where all the nurses and medical staff are
+foreigners, all of them trained and skilful. Even the nurses had a
+soldierly air about them. Here everything was as clean as human industry
+could make it, and the hospital was worked like a piece of military
+mechanism. I only had a day or two here, and then I was sent by train in an
+ambulance carriage to the capital of the Orange Free State, and here I am
+in Bloemfontein Hospital. There are a lot of our wounded here, both
+officers and men, some of whom have been here for months.
+
+I have made it my business to get about amongst the private soldiers, to
+question them concerning the treatment they have received since the moment
+the Mauser rifles tumbled them over, and I say emphatically that in every
+solitary instance, without one single exception, our countrymen declare
+that they have been grandly treated. Not by the hospital nurses only, not
+by the officials alone, but by the very men whom they were fighting. Our
+"Tommies" are not the men to waste praise on any men unless it is well
+deserved, but this is just about how "Tommy" sums up the situation:
+
+"The Boer is a rough-looking beggar in the field, 'e don't wear no uniform,
+'nd 'e don't know enough about soldiers' drill to keep himself warm, but 'e
+can fight in 'is own bloomin' style, which ain't our style. If 'e'd come
+out on the veldt, 'nd fight us our way, we'd lick 'im every time, but when
+it comes to fightin' in the kopjes, why, the Boer is a dandy, 'nd if the
+rest of Europe don't think so, only let 'em have a try at 'im 'nd see. But
+when 'e has shot you he acts like a blessed Christian, 'nd bears no malice.
+'E's like a bloomin' South Sea cocoanut, not much to look at outside, but
+white 'nd sweet inside when yer know 'im, 'nd it's when you're wounded 'nd
+a prisoner that you get a chance to know 'im, see." And "Tommy" is about
+correct in his judgment.
+
+The Boers have made most excellent provision for the treatment of wounded
+after battle. All that science can do is done. Their medical men fight as
+hard to save a British life or a British limb as medical men in England
+would battle to save life or limb of a private person. At the Bloemfontein
+Hospital everything is as near perfection, from a medical and surgical
+point, as any sane man can hope to see. It is an extensive institution. One
+end is set apart for the Boer wounded, the other for the British. No
+difference is made between the two in regard to accommodation--food,
+medical attendance, nursing, or visiting. Ministers of religion come and go
+daily--almost hourly--at both ends. Our men, when able to walk, are allowed
+to roam around the grounds, but, of course, are not allowed to go beyond
+the gates, being prisoners of war. Concerning our matron (Miss M.M. Young)
+and nurses, all I can say is that they are gentlewomen of the highest type,
+of whom any nation in the world might well be proud.
+
+I have met one or two old friends since I came here, notably Lieutenant
+Bowling, of the Australian Horse, who is now able to get about, and is
+cheerful and jolly. Lieutenant Bowling has his right thumb shot off, and
+had a terribly close call for his life, a Mauser bullet going into his head
+alongside his right eye, and coming out just in front of the right ear. His
+friends need not be anxious concerning him; he is quite out of danger, and
+he and I have killed a few tedious hours blowing tobacco smoke skywards,
+and chatting about life in far off Australia. Another familiar face was
+that of an English private, named Charles Laxen, of the Northumberlands,
+who was wounded at Stormberg. I am told that he displayed excellent pluck
+before he was laid out, firstly by a piece of shell on the side of the
+head, and, later, by a Mauser bullet through the left knee. He is getting
+along O.K., but will never see service as a soldier again on account of the
+wounded leg.
+
+I had written to the President of the Orange Free State, asking him to
+grant me my liberty on the ground that I was a non-combatant. Yesterday Mr.
+Steyn courteously sent his private secretary and carriage to the hospital
+with an intimation that I should be granted an interview. I was accordingly
+driven down to what I believe was the Stadt House. In Australia we should
+term it the Town Hall. The President met me, and treated me very
+courteously, and, after chatting over my capture and the death of my
+friend, he informed me that I might have my liberty as soon as I considered
+myself sufficiently recovered to travel. He offered me a pass _viâ_
+Lourenço Marques, but I pointed out that if I were sent that way I should
+be so far away from my work as to be practically useless to my paper. The
+President explained to me that it was not his wish nor the desire of his
+colleagues to hamper me in any way in regard to my work. "What we want more
+than anything else," remarked the President, "is that the world shall know
+the truth, and nothing but the truth, in reference to this most unhappy
+war, and we will not needlessly place obstruction in your way in your
+search for facts; if we can by any means place you in the British lines we
+will do so. If we find it impossible to do that you must understand that
+there is some potent reason for it." So I let that question drop, feeling
+satisfied that everything that a sensible man has a right to ask would be
+done on my behalf.
+
+President Steyn is a man of a notable type. He is a big man physically,
+tall and broad, a man of immense strength, but very gentle in his manner,
+as so many exceptionally strong men are. He has a typical Dutch face, calm,
+strong, and passionless. A man not easily swayed by outside agencies; one
+of those persons who think long and earnestly before embarking upon a
+venture, but, when once started, no human agency would turn him back from
+the line of conduct he had mapped out for himself. He is no ignorant
+back-block politician, but a refined, cultured gentleman, who knows the
+full strength of the British Empire; and, knowing it, he has defied it in
+all its might, and will follow his convictions to the bitter end, no matter
+what that end may be. He introduced me to a couple of gentlemen whose names
+are very dear to the Free Staters, viz., Messrs. Fraser and Fischer, and
+whilst the interview lasted nothing was talked of but the war, and it
+struck me very forcibly that not one of those men had any hatred in their
+hearts towards the British people. "This," said the President, "is not a
+war between us and the British people on any question of principle; it is a
+war forced upon us by a band of capitalistic adventurers, who have
+hoodwinked the British public and dragged them into an unholy, an unjust
+struggle with a people whose only desire was to live at peace with all men.
+We do not hate your nation; we do not hate your soldiers, though they fight
+against us; but we do hate and despise the men who have brought a cruel war
+upon us for their own evil ends, whilst they try to cloak their designs in
+a mantle of righteousness and liberty." I may not have given the exact
+words of the President, as I am writing from memory, but I think I have
+given his exact sentiments; and, if I am any judge of human nature, the
+love of his country is the love of his life.
+
+
+
+
+
+                            "STOPPING A FEW."
+
+
+I saw him first, years ago upon a station in New South Wales; a neat, smart
+figure less than nine stone in weight, but it was nine stone of fencing
+wire full of the electricity of life. He was in the stockyard when I first
+saw him, working like any ordinary station hand, for it was the busy
+portion of the year, and at such times the squatters' sons work like any
+hired hand, only a lot harder, if they are worth their salt, and have not
+been bitten by the mania for dudeism during their college course in the
+cities. There was nothing of the dandy about this fellow. From head to heel
+he was a man's son, full of the vim of living, strong with the lust of
+life. The sweat ran down his face, dirty with the dust kicked up by the
+cattle in the stockyard. His clothes were not guiltless of mire, for he had
+been knocked over more than once that morning, and there was an edge upon
+his voice as he rapped out his orders to the stockmen who were working with
+him. He did not look in the least degree pretty, and there was not enough
+poetry about him just then to make an obituary jingle on a tombstone. I
+little thought that day that a time would come when he would prove the
+glory of his Australian breeding in the teeth of an enemy's guns on African
+soil.
+
+I saw him again--under silk this time--as a gentleman rider. He was the
+same quiet, cool little fellow, grey-eyed, steel-lipped, stout-hearted,
+with "hands" that Archer might have envied. He rode at his fences that day
+as the Australian amateurs can ride, with a rip and a rattle, with the
+long, loose leg, the hands well down, and head up and back, and "Over or
+Through" was his motto. I did not know him to speak to in those old days.
+We were to shake hands under peculiar circumstances away in a foreign land,
+in a foreign hospital, both of us prisoners of war, both of us wounded.
+That was where and how I spoke to little Dowling, lieutenant in the First
+Australian Horse, as game a sample of humanity as ever threw leg over
+saddle or loosed a rifle at a foe. He came to my bedside the morning after
+I entered the hospital, and standing over me with a green shade over one
+eye, and one hand in a sling, said laconically:
+
+"Australian ain't you?"
+
+"Yes, by gad, and I know you." He reached out his left hand, and placed it
+in mine.
+
+"Been 'stopping one'?" he remarked.
+
+"Only a graze, thank God," I replied.
+
+Then the matron and the German doctor, as fine a gentleman as ever drew
+breath, came along to have a look at me, and he was turned out; but we
+chummed, as Australians have a knack of doing in time of trouble, and I
+tried hard to get him to talk of his adventures, but he was a mummy on that
+subject. He would not yarn about his own doings on the fateful day when he
+was laid out, though he was eloquent enough concerning the doings of his
+comrades. All I could get out of him in regard to his own part in the fray
+was that his men and he had been ambushed, and that he had "stopped one"
+with his head, and one with his hand, and another with his leg, his horse
+had been killed, and he knew mighty little more about it until he found
+himself in the hands of the Boers, who had treated him well and kindly. I
+asked the matron about his wounds, and she told me that a bullet had
+entered the corner of his right eye, coming out by the right ear, ruining
+the sight for ever. Another had carried away his right thumb, and a couple
+had passed through his right leg, one just below the groin, another 'just
+above the knee. That was what he modestly termed "stopping a few."
+
+After I had been in hospital a little while, the matron gave me leave to
+prowl about to pick up "copy," and my feet soon led me into the ward where
+the wounded Dutchmen were lying, and there I met a couple of burghers who
+had been in the _mêlée_ when Dowling was gathered in. One of them was
+a handsome Swede, with a long blonde moustache, that fell with a glorious
+sweep on to his chest, as the Viking's did of old. He was an adventurer,
+who knew how to take his gruel like a man. He had joined the Boers because
+he thought they were the weaker side, and had done his best for them. He
+saw Dowling talking to me one day, and asked me if I knew the "little
+devil." "Yes," I replied, "we are countrymen." "Americans?" he asked. "No,
+Australians." He raised himself on his elbow, whilst I propped his
+shoulders up with pillows, and as he remained thus he gazed admiringly at
+the slight, boyish figure which limped lazily through the ward. "What a
+little tiger cat he is," muttered the recumbent giant. "I thought we'd have
+to kill him before we got him, and that would have been a shame, for I hate
+to kill brave men when they have no chance." "Tell me about it," I said.
+"He won't give me any information himself, only tells me he 'stopped a
+few.'" The big, handsome Swede laughed a mighty laugh under his great
+blonde moustache.
+
+"Stopped a few, did he? If all your fellows fought it out to the bitter end
+as he did, we should run short of ammunition before the war was very old."
+
+A Boer nurse came over and asked us "what nonsense we made one with the
+other, that we did laugh to ourselves like two hens clucking over one egg."
+The blonde giant turned his joyous blue eyes upon her, and paid her a
+compliment which caused her to bridle, whilst the blood swept like a
+race-horse in its stride over neck, and cheek, and brow, causing her
+dainty, girlish face to look prettier than ever. "Ah, little Eckhardt," he
+whispered, and then murmured something in Dutch. I did not understand the
+words, but there was something in the sound of the adventurer's voice which
+conjured up a moonlit garden, a rose-crowned gate swinging on one hinge, a
+girl on one side and a fool on the other. The nurse tossed her pretty head
+with its wealth of jet black hair, and as she smoothed his pillows with
+infinite care she murmured: "Fighting and making love, making love and
+fighting--it is all one to you, Karl. I know you, you big pirate; you are
+as a hen that lays away from home." And with that round of shrapnel she
+left us.
+
+Karl got rid of a fourteen-pound sigh, which sounded like the bursting of a
+lyddite shell. Then he slipped his hand under his pillow and drew forth a
+flask of "Dop." "Drink to her," he said. "To whom?" I asked, falling in
+with the humour of the man. "To the girl I love," he muttered like a
+schoolboy. "Which one, Karl?" I asked, and I laughed as I spoke. He
+snatched the brandy from my hand, lifted the flask to his lips, and drank
+deeply. Then again his mighty laugh ran through the hospital ward. "Which
+one?" he said; "why, all of them, God bless them. But the maid that is
+nearest is always the dearest." "Shut up, you Goth," I said, "and tell me
+about Dowling, for some day I shall write the story, and I would like to
+hear it from the lips of one of his enemies." The Swede lay back upon his
+pillow, stroking the golden horns of hair that fell each side of his mouth,
+and I noticed that the lips which a little time before had been smiling
+into the face of the nurse were now hard set and stern. So I could have
+imagined him standing by the side of his gun, or rushing headlong on to our
+ranks. A man with a mouth like that could not flinch in the hour of peril
+if he tried, for his jaw had the Kitchener grip, the antithesis of the
+parrot pout of the dandy, or the flabby fulness of the fool.
+
+"It was in the fore part of the day," he said at length. "We had been
+posted snugly overnight on both sides of two ranges of kopjes, for we knew
+that your fellows were going to attempt a reconnaissance next day. How did
+we know? you ask. Well, comrade, ask no questions of that kind, and I'll
+tell you no lies. The truth I won't tell you."
+
+But we knew, and we were ready. We were disappointed when we saw the force,
+for we had expected something much bigger, and had made arrangements for a
+larger capture. It was only a troop of Australian Horse that came our way,
+and 'the little devil' was riding at their head. We bided our time, hoping
+that he might be followed by more men, and, above all, we expected and
+wanted some guns; but they did not put in an appearance, so we loosed upon
+the little troop. They were fairly ambushed; they did not know that a rifle
+was within miles of them until the bullets were singing through their
+ranks. Horses plunged suddenly forward, reared, lurched now to the near
+side, now to the off, then blundered forward on their heads, for many of
+our men fired at the chargers instead of at the riders. Dowling's horse
+went down with a bullet between the flap of the saddle and the crease of
+the shoulder, and the little chap went spinning over his head amongst the
+rocks. But a good many saddles were empty. He was up in a moment, yelling
+to his men to ride for their lives, and they rode. We charged from cover,
+and rode down on the men who had fallen, and as we closed in on them your
+countryman lifted his rifle and loosed on us.
+
+"One of our fellows took a flying shot at him at close quarters, for his
+rifle was talking the language of death, and that is a tongue no man likes
+to listen to. The bit of lead took him in the eye and came out by his ear,
+and down he went. But he climbed up in a moment, and his rifle was going to
+his shoulder again, when I fired to break his arm, and carried his thumb
+away--the thumb of the right hand, I think. The rifle clattered on to the
+rocks, but as we drew round him he pulled his revolver with his one good
+hand, and started to pot us. He looked a gamecock as he stood there in the
+sunlight, his face all bathed in blood, and his shattered hand hanging
+numbed beside him. So we gave him a couple in the legs to steady him, and
+down by his dead horse he went; but even then he was as eager for fight as
+a grass widow is for compliments, and it was not until Jan Viljoens jammed
+the butt of his rifle on the crown of his head that he stretched himself
+out and took no further part in that circus. We carried him into our lines,
+and handed him over to our medical man, though even as we gathered him up
+our scouts came galloping in to tell us that a big body of British troops
+were advancing to cut us off from our main body. But we knew that if we
+left him until your ambulance people found him, it was a million to one
+that he would bleed to death amongst the rocks, and he was too good a
+fighter and too brave a fellow to be left to a fate like that. Had he shown
+the white feather we might have left him to the asvogels."
+
+"And so," said I, "that is how little Dowling, son of Australia, came, as
+he said, 'to stop a few' for the sake of his breeding. If I live, the men
+out in the sunny Southland shall hear how he did it, and his name shall be
+known round the gold-hunters' camp fires, and be mentioned with pride where
+the cattle drovers foregather to talk of the African war and the men who
+fought and fell there."
+
+
+
+
+
+                        AUSTRALIA AT THE WAR.
+
+                                                               ENSLIN CAMP.
+
+
+Lately I have been over a very considerable tract of country in the saddle.
+I might remain at one spot and glean the information from various sources,
+but do not care to do my business in that manner, simply because one is
+then at the mercy of one's informants. I find it quite hard enough to get
+at the truth even when it is personally sought for. It is really astounding
+how lies increase and multiply as they spread from camp to camp. At one
+spot a fellow ventilates an opinion that a big battle will be fought next
+day at a certain spot; some other person catches a portion of the
+conversation, and promptly tells his neighbour that a big battle has taken
+place at the spot mentioned. A little later a passing train pulls up at
+that camp, and a party possessing a picturesque and vivid imagination at
+once informs the guard that a fearful fight has occurred, in which a
+General, a Colonel, twelve subs., and six hundred men have been killed on
+our side, with fourteen hundred wounded and nine hundred prisoners. The
+Boer losses are generally estimated at something like five times that
+number.
+
+The guard tells the tale later on to some traveller, who embellishes it,
+and passes it along as a fact. He goes into details, tells harrowing
+stories concerning hair-raising escapes from shot and shell. He splashes
+the surrounding rocks with gouts of blood, and then shudders dismally at
+the sight his fancy has conjured up. When the thrilled listener has
+refreshed the tale-teller from his whisky flask, the romancist takes up the
+thread of his narrative once more, and tells how the Lancers thundered over
+the shivering veldts in pursuit of flying hordes of foemen, and for awhile,
+like some graveyard ghoul, he revels in the moans of the dying and the
+blood of the slain. Another pull at the flask sets him going again like
+clockwork, and he makes a vivid picture out of the thunder of the guns as
+our gallant (they are always gallant) fellows bombarded the enemy from the
+heights.
+
+Then he switches off from the artillery, and tells a blood-curdling tale of
+Boer treachery and cowardice. He tells how the enemy held out the white
+flag to coax our men to stop firing. Then, in awe-inspiring tones, he sobs
+forth a tale of dark and dismal war, how our soldiers respected the white
+flag and rested on their arms, only to be mowed down by a withering rifle
+fire from the canaille who represent the enemy in the field. Having got so
+far, he does not feel justified in stopping until he has thrown in some
+flowery language concerning a Boer cannonade upon British ambulance
+waggons, full of wounded; from that he drifts by easy and natural stages to
+Dum-Dum bullets, and the robbing of the wounded, and insults to the slain.
+And that is very often the person who is quoted in newspaper interviews--as
+a gentleman who was an eye-witness, and etc., etc., etc.
+
+And yet, for some reason which I have been unable to gauge, the military
+authorities talk of sending all correspondents away from the front. It
+seems to me that it would be far better to give _bonâ fide_ newspaper
+men every reasonable opportunity of discovering the truth instead of
+hampering them in any way. I fail to see why Great Britain and her Colonies
+should be kept in the dark concerning the progress of the war, for all the
+foreign Powers will be well supplied with information from the Boer lines;
+and, if we are blocked, some at least of the British newspapers will most
+assuredly go to foreign sources for news, if they are not allowed to obtain
+it for themselves. Others will content themselves with news gathered
+haphazard, and the last state of the Army, as far as the public mind is
+concerned, will be far worse than the first.
+
+Colonel Hoad, who commands the Australians at Enslin, has offered the seven
+hundred and sixteen men, who up to date have acted as infantry, to the
+authorities as mounted infantry, and the offer has been accepted, much to
+the delight of the men, all of whom are very eager to get into the saddle,
+as they imagine that when their mounts arrive they will get a chance to go
+into action. They have been practising horsemanship during the day, and did
+fairly well, as many of them are expert riders, many more are fair; but a
+few of them are more at home on a sand-heap than in a saddle. There are not
+many of the latter kind, however. They will soon knock into shape, for
+Colonel Hoad hates the sight of a slovenly horseman as badly as a duck
+hates a dust storm. He is an untiring rider himself, and will work the
+beggars who cannot ride until they can.
+
+After the arrival in Capetown of the two celebrated soldiers, Lords Roberts
+and Kitchener, I made it my business to converse with as many Boers as
+possible in regard to the two Generals, and was astonished to find how much
+they knew concerning them. How, and from whom, they get information passes
+my comprehension, but the fact remains that they knew all over the country
+as soon, if not sooner, than we did that our great leaders had arrived.
+They do not seem to fear them, though they invariably speak of them as
+wonderful soldiers. "God and Oom Paul Kruger will look after us," is their
+creed. Their faith in President Kruger is simply boundless. Not only do
+they fancy that he is a man of dauntless courage, great sagacity, and
+indomitable will, but they really seem to think that he has God's special
+blessing concerning this war.
+
+He is to the Boers what Mahomet was to the wild tribesmen of Arabia, and it
+is as impossible to shake their faith in him as it would be to shake their
+faith in the story of Mount Calvary. It is all very well for a certain
+class of writers to attempt to cast unbounded ridicule upon these men and
+their leader, but it is not by ridicule that they can be conquered. It is
+not by contemptuous utterances or by untrue reports that they can be
+overcome. It is not by belittling them that we can raise ourselves in the
+eyes of the men of to-day or ennoble ourselves upon the pages of history.
+It would be conduct more in accordance with the traditions of a great
+nation if we gave them credit for the virtues they possess and the courage
+they display.
+
+It is hard to drag any sort of information from a Boer, whether bond or
+free, but from what I can pick up they are perfectly satisfied with what
+they have done up to date. They think that President Kruger has astonished
+the world, and they wag their heads, and give one to understand that the
+same old gentleman has a good many more surprises in store for us. It is
+impossible to get a direct statement of any kind from them, but by patching
+fragments together I incline to the opinion that they really count on Cape
+Colony rising when Kruger wants a rising. Personally, from my own limited
+observations, I would not give a fig of tobacco for the alleged loyalty of
+the Cape Colony. If I am correct, this "surprise" will give the enemy an
+additional force of 45,000 men, most of whom will be found able to ride
+well and shoot straight.
+
+It is nonsense to say that they will only form a mob destitute of
+discipline and unprovided with officers. They will not be a mob, they will
+be guerilla soldiers of the same type that the North and South in America
+provided, and they will take a lot of whipping at their own peculiar
+tactics. As for officers--well, up to date, they have not gone short of
+them. It is true they do not bear the hallmark of any modern university,
+but they know how to lead men into battle, all the same. They wear no
+uniforms, neither do they adorn themselves with any of the stylish
+trappings of war, but they are brainy, resourceful men, highly useful if
+not ornamental. Like Oliver Cromwell's hard-faced "Roundheads," they are
+the children of a great emergency, not much to look at, but full of a "get
+there" quality, which many school-bred soldiers lack entirely.
+
+I rode down to Belmont a couple of days ago, and had a look at the
+Canadians and Queenslanders, who are quartered there. They are all in
+excellent health and spirits, and seem to be just about hungry for a fight.
+The Munsters, who are quartered there, are simply spoiling for a brush with
+the enemy, and seem to be as full of ginger as any men I have ever seen.
+
+And every one of them with whom I conversed--and I chatted with a good many
+of the burly young Irishmen--expressed a keen desire to meet in open fight
+the Irish brigade now fighting on the side of the Boers. Should it ever
+come to pass during the progress of the war, I devoutly hope that I may be
+handy to witness the struggle. It will not be a long-range fight if I am
+any judge of men and things; it will be settled at close quarters, and the
+"baynit and the butt" will play a prominent part in the _mêlée_.
+
+A few of our New Zealand fellows got to close quarters with the enemy
+recently up Colesberg way, and they did just as we knew they would when it
+came to the crossing of steel. The Boers stormed the position, and the New
+Zealanders joined in the bayonet charge which drove them back. Our men had
+a couple killed and one or two wounded. The enemy left a goodish number of
+dead on the field when they retired, about thirty of whom met their fate at
+the bayonet's point. The British losses were small. There was nothing
+remarkable about the behaviour of the New Zealanders in action; they simply
+did coolly and well what they were ordered to do, and proved that they are
+quite as good fighting material as anything the Old Country can produce.
+The gravest misfortune which has yet befallen any of the Australians
+happened at the same locality, when eighteen New South Welshmen allowed
+themselves to be pinned in a tight place. Eight escaped, but the others are
+either prisoners or killed. We do not like the surrender business, and
+would rather see our men do as their fathers and grandfathers used to
+do--bite the motto, "No surrender," into the butts of their rifles with
+their teeth, and fight their way out of a hot corner. There has been a good
+deal too much of this throwing up of arms during the present campaign, and
+I hope that we shall hear less of it in the future.
+
+We had a nasty night here at Enslin. Word reached our headquarters that
+three thousand mounted Boers were on the move towards our camp, which, for
+strategic purposes, is the most important between Methuen's column and De
+Aar. If the enemy could take Enslin they could make things very awkward for
+General Methuen, because they would then have him between two fires. As
+soon as the news came our fellows, with the Gordons, were ordered to occupy
+the surrounding heights. All night long, and well on into the day, we held
+them until we learned that the enemy had decided not to attack us. Had they
+done so they would have paid bitterly for their rashness, for the place is
+practically impregnable. A thousand resolute and skilful men, who knew how
+to use both rifle and bayonet, could hold the place against 20,000 of the
+finest troops in the world, providing the defenders were not hopelessly
+crushed by an immense artillery force.
+
+General Hector Macdonald went through here the other day to take the
+command of the Highland Brigade, in the place of the late General Wauchope.
+The "Scots" who were with us lined up and gave the General a thrilling
+welcome, whilst our fellows, who are not usually demonstrative, crowded
+around the railway line to get a look at the brilliant soldier who, by
+sheer merit, dauntless pluck, and iron resolution, forced his way from the
+ranks to the high place he holds. The Australians had expected to see a
+gaunt, prematurely aged man, war-worn and battle-broken, and were surprised
+to see a dashing, gallant-looking man, who might in appearance comfortably
+have passed for five-and-thirty. The grey-clad men, in soft slouch hats,
+from the land of the Southern Cross, lounging about with pipes in their
+teeth, did not break into hysterical cheering--they are not built that way;
+they simply looked at the man whose full history every one of them knew as
+well as he knew the way into the front door of a "pub." But their flashing
+eyes and clenched hands told in language more eloquent than a salvo of
+cheers that this was their ideal man, the man they would follow rifle in
+hand up the brimstone heights of hell itself, if need be; aye, and stand
+sentry there until the day of judgment, if Hector Macdonald gave the order.
+
+
+
+
+
+                         AUSTRALIA ON THE MOVE.
+
+                                                                  RENSBURG.
+
+
+A complete change has come to the Australians who are in Africa under
+Colonel Hoad. We have left General Methuen's column, and joined that of
+General French. Formerly we were at Enslin, within sound of the guns that
+were fired daily at Magersfontein; now we are two hundred and twenty miles
+away, and are within easy patrolling distance of Colesberg.
+
+Before we left Methuen's column we had one small night affair, which,
+however, did not amount to a great deal, though it has been very much
+exaggerated in local newspaper circles, and will, I fear, be unduly boomed
+in some of the Australian journals. The whole affair simply amounted to
+this. One hundred of the Victorian Mounted Rifles went out to make a
+demonstration towards Sunnyside, in Cape Colony, where a number of rebels
+were known to congregate. A hundred Queenslanders and Canadians were with
+them, when a corporal and a trooper of the Victorians saw an unarmed Boer
+and a nigger riding towards them in the twilight. The Boer, as soon as he
+was challenged, wheeled his horse and rode off at a gallop; our men rode
+after the runaway, but would not fire upon the white man because they
+thought he was simply a farmer who had got rather a bad scare at meeting
+armed men.
+
+The Boer, however, played a deep game; he rode for a bit of a rise composed
+of broken ground, where, unknown to our scouts, a party of rebels lay
+concealed. As soon as the flying rebel was in safety the Boers opened fire,
+shooting Peter Falla, the trooper, twice through the arm, one bullet
+entering a few inches below the shoulder, the other shattering the bone a
+little way above the elbow. The corporal got away safely, taking his
+wounded comrade with him. Our fellows rode out and swept the veldt for
+miles, but saw no more of the enemy. So ended what has grandiloquently been
+termed "an Australian engagement," which, I may add, is just the kind of
+flapdoodle our troopers do not want. What they most desire on earth at
+present is an opportunity to show what they are made of. They don't want
+cheap newspaper puffs, nor laudatory speeches from generals. They want to
+get into grip with the enemy, and, as an Australian, let me say now that
+Imperial federation will get a greater shock by keeping these fine fellows
+out of action than by anything else that could happen under heaven. They
+did not come here on a picnic party, they did not come for a circus; they
+don't want a lot of maudlin sentiment wasted on them whilst they stay out
+of the firing line to mind the jam, or give the African girls a treat.
+
+Mr. Chamberlain has made a good many mistakes in regard to the war,
+mistakes that will live in history when his very name is forgotten, but he
+need not add to them by alienating Australian sentiment by coddling men who
+came across the Indian Ocean to prove to the whole world that on the field
+of battle they are as good as their sires. Our fellows have got hold of a
+rumour (the prophets only could tell whence camp rumours originate) that
+instructions have been received from England that they are to be kept out
+of danger, and a madder lot of men you could not find anywhere between here
+and Tophet. They wanted to send a petition to Lord Roberts asking to be
+allowed to face the enemy, but though the officers are quite as sore as the
+men, they could not permit such a breach of discipline. So now the men ease
+their feelings by jeering at each other.
+
+"What are we here fer, Bill?"
+
+"Oh, get yer head felt; any fool knows why we are here. There's a blessed
+marmalade factory somewhere about, and we are going to mind it whilst the
+British Tommy does the fighting."
+
+"Marmalade be d----!" chirruped a voice down the lines. "Think they'd trust
+us to look after anything so important?"
+
+"Oh, you're a blessed prophet, you are," snarls the little bugler. "P'raps
+you'll tell us what our game is."
+
+"Easy enough, little 'un. Our officers 've got to practise making mud maps
+in the dust with a stick, and we've got to fool around and keep the flies
+away."
+
+"I suppose they'll keep us at this till the war's over, and then send us to
+England, 'nd give us a bloomin' medal, 'nd tell us then we are gory,
+crimson heroes. Ugh!" grunts a big West Australian with a face like a
+nightmare, and a voice that comes out of his chest with a sound like a
+steam saw coming through a wet log.
+
+"Don't know about England 'nd the medal, 'Beauty,'" chirrups a Sydney
+gunner, "but I know what they'll give us in Australia if we go back without
+a fight."
+
+"P'raps it'll be a mansion, or a sheep station, or a stud of racehorses,"
+meekly suggests a tired-looking South Australian, with a derisive twist of
+his under lip.
+
+"No, they won't present us with a racing stud," lisps the gunner, "but, by
+G----, they'll shy chaff enough at us to keep all the bloomin' horses
+between 'ere and 'ell, and the girls will send us a kid's feedin' bottle,
+as a mark of feelin' and esteem, every Valentine's Day for ten years to
+come, because of the glorious name we made for Australia on the bloody
+fields of war in Africa."
+
+"Fields o' war--fields o' whisky 'nd watermelons! Oh, d---- it! I'm going
+ter stop writing ter my girl before she writes ter tell me that a white
+feather don't suit a girl's complexion in Australia."
+
+He lifts his bugle, and sounds "Feed up" so savagely that the horses strain
+on their leg ropes and kick themselves into a lather as hot as their
+riders' tempers, the long, loose-limbed troopers move off, cursing
+artistically in their beards at the very thought of the roasting they will
+get from the witty-tongued, red-lipped girls of Australia, when--
+
+
+          They cross the rolling ocean,
+          Back from the fields of war,
+          To show the British medal
+          They got for guarding a store.
+
+          To show the British medal
+          On stations, towns, and farms,
+          They got for guarding the marmalade,
+          Far away from war's alarms.
+
+          To show the British medal,
+          With a blush of angry shame,
+          For which they went to risk their lives
+          In young Australia's name.
+
+          To show the British medal,
+          With a sneer that's half a sob,
+          Ere they pawn it to their uncle,
+          And go and drink the "bob."
+
+
+When we received notice to move away from Enslin down the line through
+Graspan, Belmont, Orange River, to De Aar, our fellows were naturally very
+wrathful; they had done splendid work for many weeks up that way; they had
+dug trenches, sunk wells, drilled unceasingly; they had watched the kopjes
+and scoured the veldt, and all that they were told to do they did like
+soldiers--readily and uncomplainingly. The cold nights and the scorching
+days, the monotonous drudgery, found them always ready and willing, because
+they believed that when the order came for a great battle at Magersfontein,
+or an onward march to Kimberley, they would be in the thick of it. But for
+some reason, known only to those who gave the order, they were sent away
+from the front, and they felt it keenly. From De Aar they were sent on to
+Naauwpoort, and from this latter place they were forwarded on to Rensburg.
+
+At Naauwpoort nearly all the Australians were mounted, and now acted as
+mounted infantry. The horses supplied are Indian ponies, formerly used by
+the Madras Cavalry. They are a first-class lot of cattle, well suited to
+the work that lies before them, and have evidently been selected by someone
+who knows his business a good deal better than a great number of his
+colleagues. General French inspected the men at Rensburg during the first
+day or two, and seemed fairly well satisfied with them, though, of course,
+they did not make a first-class show in their initial efforts on horseback.
+A great number of them rode well, but very few of them had ever gone
+through a course of mounted drill, and it will take a week or two to knock
+them into shape for this work; though, when once out of the saddle, they
+are not in any way inferior to the best British regiments I have seen. But
+they are keen to learn, and very willing, so that I expect to see them make
+wonderfully rapid strides towards efficiency as mounted men. They seem to
+feel that their only chance to get a fight is to become high grade
+soldiers, and to that end they will stand all the work that can be crowded
+into them. I have no idea what their future movements will be, nor do I
+think anyone else connected with the regiment has; but one thing seems
+certain, that sooner or later they will fall foul of the enemy in small
+skirmishing parties, as the kopjes for a length of twenty miles are
+infested by little bands of Boers, who have a knack of disappearing as soon
+as a British force draws near them, only, however, to crop up again in a
+fresh place, a short distance away.
+
+For the Boer is a past master in this kind of warfare, and knows how to
+play his own game to perfection. What the Goorkha is in Indian warfare, so
+the Boer is in Africa. He does not fight in our style, but that does not
+say that he cannot fight, neither does it argue that he is devoid of
+courage. As a matter of fact, the more I have seen of this country, and
+note what the Boers have done in opposition to all the might of Great
+Britain, the more I am impressed with the idea that our alleged
+Intelligence Department wants cutting down and burning root and branch, for
+it must have been absolutely rotten, or unquestionably corrupt. We were led
+by members of this Department to believe that the Boer was a cowardly kind
+of veldt pariah, a degenerate offshoot of a fine old parent stock. Well,
+the Boer is nothing of the kind. He is not in any way degenerate. He is a
+good fighting man, according to his lights. He does not wear a stand-up
+collar, nor an eyeglass, nor spats to his veldtschoon. He does not talk
+with a silly lisp or an inane drawl. Therefore, the useless fellows whom
+Britain trusted with the important task of watching him and sizing him up
+counted him as a boor as well as a Boer--a mere country clod. But now, from
+the rocky hills, these clods, these sons of semi-white savages, laugh at us
+derisively, and answer our jeers with rifles that know how to speak in a
+language that even the bravest of our troops have learnt to understand--and
+respect.
+
+I have a keen recollection of the last Franco-Prussian War. I remember how
+the English newspapers ridiculed the French military authorities because,
+whilst the Germans had accurate maps of every province within the French
+borders, the French themselves were grossly ignorant of their own
+territory. Now we can eat our own sarcasms and enjoy the bitter fruit of
+our own irony, for, thanks to the Intelligence Department connected with
+the War Office in Great Britain, we to-day stand precisely in the same
+position towards our African enemy as France did towards Prussia. A glance
+at the country through which I have recently passed shows only too clearly
+that, whilst Paul Kruger and his advisers knew our full strength to a man,
+we, on our part, knew nothing about him or the men, money, or ordnance at
+his command. We knew nothing of the country which had been patiently
+fortified by the best skilled military engineers in Europe. We know nothing
+of his rocky, well-fortified country, which lies behind that which we have
+already attacked. Our generals, instead of being supplied with maps
+covering every inch of country within the enemy's borders, have to gather
+information at the bayonet's point at a loss to the Empire in men, money,
+and in prestige. If our commanders blunder, who is to blame but the
+criminally negligent officials who have supplied them with false or foolish
+data to work upon? The Empire has been betrayed, either wilfully or through
+crass idleness upon the part of men who have dipped deeply into the
+Empire's coffers, and the nation should demand their impeachment, apart
+from their position, place, or power, and punishment of the most drastic
+kind should follow speedily in the footsteps of impeachment.
+
+The failure of General Buller to relieve Ladysmith was not due to any want
+of sagacity on the part of that General. It was not due to any want of
+bravery on the part of his troops. The General is worthy of his rank, and
+worthy of the confidence of the nation, and his troops are as good as the
+men who, under the same flag, taught the Russians to respect the power of
+Britain. The cause of the failure lay mainly in the want of knowledge on
+our part concerning the strength of the country the Boers held, and the
+strength of the country they had to fall back upon when hard pressed.
+
+That information the "Intelligence" Department ought to have been able to
+place in the hands of General Buller before he moved forward to the relief
+of the beleaguered garrison in Ladysmith. But they could not give what they
+had never possessed.
+
+Right up to the present moment, when the Boers have been forced to meet our
+troops at close quarters, they have been found to possess no other arms
+than the rifle. This has given truth to the belief that the enemy as an
+attacking force is next door to useless, as no men, no matter how brave and
+determined, could do very much damage to first-class troops armed with the
+bayonet.
+
+However, there is a whisper in the air that the Boers are not deficient in
+side-arms; it is rumoured that the President of the Boer Republic has
+immense supplies of offensive as well as defensive weapons safely placed
+away until they may be required Right up to date his war policy has been to
+remain passive, excepting in a few isolated positions, allowing the British
+to attack his generals in almost impregnable positions, and by so doing put
+heart into the burghers, and dishearten our forces. But should the tide of
+war continue to roll onward in his favour he may attempt to put in force
+the oft-told Boer threat, and try to sweep the British into the sea. Should
+that day dawn, it is rumoured that the enemy will be found well supplied
+with side-arms and with mercenaries trained to their use in one of the best
+schools that modern times have known. Where do these rumours come from?
+Well, a Boer prisoner, taunted perhaps by a guard, loses his temper and
+drops a hint, or a Boer farmer, exultant over the latest news of his
+countrymen's success, lifts the veil a little, and a jealously-guarded
+secret drops out; or, again, a Boer's wife or daughter, flinging a taunt at
+a cursed "Rooinek," allows her temper to run away with her discretion.
+There are a hundred ways in which such things get about; only straws,
+perhaps, but a straw can point the way windward. A talkative Kaffir who has
+been reared on a Dutch farm will at times give things away that would cost
+him his life if the length of his tongue was known to his master;
+especially will the nigger talk if his mouth be judiciously moistened with
+Cape smoke brandy.
+
+Information that comes to a war correspondent's hand is of many colours,
+shapes, and sizes, but if he is born to the business he pieces the whole
+together and picks out what seemeth good to his own soul at the finish.
+Sometimes, at the end of a week's hard work, he finds himself possessed of
+a patchwork of information like unto Joseph's coat of many colours, but it
+is hard fortune indeed if he cannot find something in the lot to repay him
+for his earnest endeavours.
+
+
+
+
+
+                          SLINGERSFONTEIN.
+
+                                                                  RENSBURG.
+
+
+Scarcely had I returned from posting my last letter when the camp was in a
+commotion, caused by the news that the West Australians were in action at
+Slingersfontein, distant about twelve miles from Rensburg. To saddle up and
+get out as fast as horseflesh would carry a man was but the work of a very
+short period of time, for the gallop across the open veldt was not a very
+laborious undertaking. I soon found that the stalwart sons of the great
+gold colony were in it, and enjoying it.
+
+Slingersfontein is an important position on the right flank of French's
+column. It is not only an important but a very hard position to hold on
+account of the nature of the country. Here there is but very little open
+veldt; mile after mile is covered by small kopjes that rise in countless
+numbers, until the whole country looks as if it were covered with a
+veritable forest of hills. Once inside that labyrinth of rocky
+excrescences, an army might easily be lost, unless every individual man and
+officer knew the place thoroughly. The Boers know the lay of the land, and,
+consequently, shift from post to post by paths that are unknown to anyone
+else with marvellous dexterity and incredible swiftness. Our forces hold a
+small plain, which is like the palm of a giant's hand, with the surrounding
+kopjes representing the digits. We hold those kopjes also. The shape of the
+camp is in the form of a horseshoe, all around the little basin great hills
+rise, and from those hills England's watch-dogs keep a sharp look-out on
+the movements of the foe; and well they need to, for, in ground which suits
+him, the African farmer is as 'cute and cunning as a Red Indian. Behind our
+position, or, rather, outside of it, there is another small tract of open
+country, but beyond that, lapping around our stronghold like a crescent, is
+rough, hilly ground. None of those hills is worth dignifying with the title
+of mountain, but all of them are big enough to shelter a hundred or two of
+the enemy, and it is there that they play their game of hide and seek,
+which is so trying to the nerves of young troops. The Boers hold that rough
+country entirely, and the outer edge of their semi-circle is not, at any
+given point, more than four miles from our centre at Slingersfontein.
+
+The outer line of kopjes which skirt their stalking ground are bigger than
+the hills on the inner side, so that they have an excellent opportunity to
+conceal their movements from the observation of our most astute pickets,
+and the only way in which our commanding officer can locate the enemy with
+any degree of certainty is by making a reconnaissance in force, and, if
+possible, drawing their fire. If the Boers fall into this trap they
+invariably pay dearly for the slight advantage they gain over the
+investigating force, for our guns soon make any known position untenable.
+The Boer leaders know this, however, and are very loth to allow temptation
+to overcome discretion; but at times, either through the impetuosity of
+their troops or through errors in generalship, they give themselves away
+entirely, and that is precisely what they did upon this occasion.
+
+By means only known to those high up in authority, our people had become
+acquainted with the fact that the enemy intended to try to extend their
+line on our right flank, and so threaten us not only upon the left flank,
+the direct front, and right flank, but also in the rear. Could they succeed
+in doing this they would have us in a peculiarly tight place, as, once
+posted in force well down on our right flank, they would then at least be
+able to harass us badly in our communications with Rensburg, which is our
+main base of operations. It is there that the General has his headquarters;
+it is from there that we keep in touch, per medium of the railway and
+telegraph lines, with the rest of the British Army in South Africa. It is
+from there that we draw all our supplies of fodder and ammunition. It is
+from there we should draw all our additional force if we needed
+reinforcements in case of a general assault by the enemy upon our position
+at Slingersfontein, and it is from there that we should be strengthened
+should we decide to make a forward move on the Boers' position. Therefore
+it behoved us to keep that line of communication intact, no matter what the
+cost. All these things were as well known to the Boer leader as to us, and
+that is why they were as keen to get the position as we were, and why we
+are keen to stop them from accomplishing their object.
+
+It was for the purpose of ascertaining just what the enemy intended to do,
+and how many men they had to do it with, that Major Ethoran ordered out the
+West Australian Mounted Infantry, consisting of about 75 men, under Captain
+Moor, an Imperial soldier in the pay of the West Australian Government, and
+a small body of Inniskilling Dragoons and Lancers, with a section of the
+Royal Horse Artillery and two guns. The men moved out of Slingersfontein on
+Tuesday about midday, and at once proceeded towards a farmhouse located
+right under the very jowl of an ugly-looking kopje.
+
+This farm was known as Pottsberg, and was well known as a regular haunt of
+the most daring and dangerous rebels in the whole district. The farm
+consisted of the usual white stone farmhouse of five or six rooms, a small
+orchard, surrounded by rough stone walls from three feet six to four feet
+in height, and about two feet thick, a small cluster of native huts, and a
+kraal for cattle, made of rough, heavy stones, topped by cakes of sun-baked
+manure, stored by the farmers for fuel. Some little distance from the back
+of the farmhouse a stout stone wall ran down from the kopjes on to the
+plain. This wall was between four and five feet in height and half a yard
+across in its weakest place--an ugly barricade in itself--behind which a
+few resolute men with quick-firing rifles, which they know how to use,
+could make a good stand against vastly superior numbers advancing upon them
+from the open veldt.
+
+When our fellows trotted out from camp, Captain Moor received orders to
+distribute his men in small bodies all along the edge of the kopjes between
+Pottsberg farmhouse and Kruger's Hill, a small kopje lying almost in a line
+with our camp, on the right. The men were ordered to go as close as
+possible to the enemy's position, to see as much as they could possibly see
+in regard to the numbers of troops in the hills held by the enemy. If they
+succeeded in discovering the rebels in large bodies they were to draw their
+fire and immediately retreat at full speed. In the meantime the two guns
+belonging to the Royal Horse Artillery were beautifully placed in a dip in
+the veldt, where they could play upon the Boers should they attempt to rush
+the West Australians at any given point. The Lancers and Dragoons were
+placed in charge of some kopjes behind the guns, in order to protect them
+should a concerted onslaught be made upon them by the mounted Boers, who
+were shrewdly suspected to be in hiding in strong force behind the first
+row of hills, which screened the enemy's position.
+
+The Australians rode out steadily, and took up their positions with an
+amount of coolness that startled older soldiers. This was absolutely their
+first trial on real fighting service, and everybody connected with them was
+anxious to see how they would comport themselves in the face of the enemy.
+Not only was it their first fighting effort, but it was their début in the
+saddle, as until a week previous they had been simply infantrymen, and not
+a dozen of them had ever been in the hands of a mounted drill instructor.
+It was a big task to set such green men, but they proved before the day was
+out that they were worthy of the confidence reposed in them. Captain Moor,
+Lieutenant Darling, and Lieutenant Parker each took a small section into
+action; the others were under the immediate control of their sergeants.
+They split up into small parties, and swept the very edge of the kopjes,
+peering into gullies, climbing the outer hills, working along the ravines
+with a courage and thoroughness that would have done credit to the oldest
+scouts in all the Empire. Yet nothing came of their investigations for
+quite a long time. The enemy did not mean to be drawn, and remained
+passive, so that the West Australians at last became a little bit reckless,
+and were consequently not so guarded as they might have been. All at once a
+body of scouts ran upon a large body of the enemy near Pottsberg Farm, in a
+deep and shady ravine. The enemy were trying to evade notice, but that was
+now impossible. In a moment rifles were ringing on the air, and after that
+first volley the little band of Australians wheeled and galloped for the
+open country. To have remained there would have meant certain death to
+every one of the half-dozen who comprised the picket, so they did their
+duty--they fired and rode for the veldt. In a few seconds Boers were
+dashing out of the kopjes on all sides, trying to cut the small band of
+Australians off or shoot them down. But the Australians knew their game;
+they opened out, so that each man was practically riding alone.
+
+The Boers could do little with them. Those who stood by the guns noticed
+that very large numbers of men in the Boer ranks were either niggers or
+half-castes, and it was also very noticeable that they knew but little
+about the use of the rifle. They fired high and wide, and notwithstanding
+the fact that they poured their ammunition away in wholesale fashion, they
+did little harm worth mentioning, although many of them fired at little
+more than pistol range. They were simply crazed with excitement, and did
+not succeed in cutting off a single member of that adventurous band.
+Whenever an Australian found himself in a tight place he simply dug his
+spurs into his horse's flanks, lifted his rifle, and blazed into the ranks
+of the foe. If his horse was shot dead under him he coo-eed to his mates,
+and kept his rifle busy, and every time the coo-ee rang out over the
+whispering veldt the Australians turned in their saddles, and riding as the
+men from the South-land can ride, they dashed to the rescue, and did not
+leave a single man in the hands of the enemy. Many a gallant deed was done
+that day by officers and men. Captain Moor gave one fellow his horse, and
+made a dash for liberty on foot, but he would have failed in his effort had
+not Lieutenant Darling, a West Australian boy, ridden to his aid, and
+together the two officers on the one horse got back to the shelter of the
+guns. The enemy still blazed away in the wildest and most farcical fashion.
+Had they been Boer hunters or marksmen very few of the West Australians
+would ever have got across that strip of veldt alive. As it was, only two
+of them got wounded, none were killed, one or two horses were shot dead,
+and then the big guns got to work in grim earnest.
+
+A party of Boers, however, got round one of the kopjes, where some of the
+Lancers were posted, and now half a dozen of those brave fellows are
+missing, and I fear they are to be counted amongst those who will never
+return again. Sergeant Watson, of the R.H., was killed, and several of his
+men and a few of the Lancers were wounded, but the R.H. guns soon swept the
+plain clear of the enemy, and they retired, carrying their dead and wounded
+with them. The work for the day was done, and well done, for the enemy had
+shown his hand. We knew his position and his strength, and next day we went
+out in force to have a word with him, but the wily Boers kept strictly
+under cover, and refused on any terms to be drawn again.
+
+
+
+
+
+                         THE WEST AUSTRALIANS.
+
+                                                                   BETHANY.
+
+
+I was feeling miserable as I sat in the hospital garden, and I rather fancy
+I looked pretty much as I felt, for a cheery-faced Boer nurse, with her
+black hair, blacker eyes, and rose-blossom lips, came up to where I sat,
+bringing with her two or three slightly wounded Boers. "I have brought some
+Boers who know something of your countrymen, Mr. Australian," she said. "I
+thought you would be glad to hear all about them." "By Jove! yes, nurse. If
+I were not a married man, I should try to thank you gracefully." "Oh, yees;
+oh, yees," she answered, tossing back her head; "that is all right. You say
+those pretty things; then, when you go away from here, you tell your wife,
+and you write in your papers we Boer girls are fat old things, who never
+use soap and water. All the Rooibaatjes do that." And off she went,
+laughing merrily, whilst my friends the enemy grinned and enjoyed the
+little comedy. So we fell to talking, and-half a dozen wounded "Tommies"
+gathered round and chipped into the conversation, which by degrees worked
+round to a deed which the West Australians did; and as I listened to the
+tale so simply told by those rough farmer men, I felt my face flush with
+pride, and my shoulders fell back square and solid once more, whilst every
+drop of blood in my veins seemed to run warm and strong, like the red wine
+they grow on the hillside in my own sunny land; for the story concerned men
+whom I knew well, men who were bred with the scent of the wattle in the
+first breath they drew, men who grew from childhood to manhood where the
+silver sentinel stars form the cross in the rich blue midnight sky. My
+countrymen--Australians--men with whom I had hunted for silver in the
+desolate backblocks of New South Wales; men with whom I had scoured the
+interior of West Australia seeking for gold; men who had been with me on
+the tin fields and opal fields. I had never doubted that they would keep
+their country's name unsullied when they met the foe on the field of war,
+yet when I heard the tale the enemy told I felt my eyes fill as they have
+seldom filled since childhood, for I was proud of the western diggers,
+proud of my blood; and at that moment, with British "Tommies" sprawling on
+the grass at my feet, and the Boer farmers grouped amongst them, I would
+sooner have called myself an Australian commoner than the son of any peer
+in any other land under high heaven.
+
+I will take the story from the Boer's mouth and tell it to you, as I hope
+to tell it round a hundred camp fires when the war is over, and I go back
+to the Australian bush once more. "It happened round Colesberg way," he
+said; "we thought we had the British beaten, and our commandant gave us the
+word to press on and cut them to pieces. Our big guns had been grandly
+handled, and our rifle fire had told its tale. We saw the British falling
+back from the kopjes they had held, and we thought that there was nothing
+between us and victory; but there was, and we found it out before we were
+many minutes older. There was one big kopje that was the very key of the
+position. Our spies had told us that this was held by an Australian force.
+We looked at it very anxiously, for it was a hard position to take, but
+even as we watched we saw that nearly all the Australians were leaving it.
+They, too, were falling back with the British troops. If we once got that
+kopje there was nothing on earth could stop us. We could pass on and sweep
+around the retiring foe, and wipe them off the earth, as a child wipes dirt
+from its hands, and we laughed when we saw that only about twenty
+Australians had been left to guard the kopje.
+
+"There were about four hundred of us, all picked men, and when the
+commandant called to us to go and take the kopje, we sprang up eagerly, and
+dashed down over some hills, meaning to cross the gully and charge up the
+kopje where those twenty men were waiting for us. But we did not know the
+Australians--then. We know them now. Scarcely had we risen to our feet when
+they loosed their rifles on us, and not a shot was wasted. They did not
+fire, as regular soldiers nearly always do, volley after volley, straight
+in front of them, but every one picked his man, and shot to kill. They
+fired like lightning, too, never dwelling on the trigger, yet never wildly
+wasting lead, and all around us our best and boldest dropped, until we
+dared not face them. We dropped to cover, and tried to pick them off, but
+they were cool and watchful, throwing no chance away. We tried to crawl
+from rock to rock to hem them in, but they, holding their fire until our
+burghers moved, plugged us with lead, until we dared not stir a step ahead;
+and all the time the British troops, with all their convoy, were slowly,
+but safely, falling back through the kopjes, where we had hoped to hem them
+in. We gnawed our beards and cursed those fellows who played our game as we
+had thought no living men could play it Then, once again, we tried to rush
+the hill, and once again they drove us back, though our guns were playing
+on the heights they held. We could not face their fire. To move upright to
+cross a dozen yards meant certain death, and many a Boer wife was widowed
+and many a child left fatherless by those silent men who held the heights
+above us. They did not cheer as we came onward. They did not play wild
+music, they only clung close as climbing weeds to the rocks, and shot as we
+never saw men shoot before, and never hope to see men shoot again.
+
+"Then we got ready to sweep the hill with guns, but our commandant,
+admiring those brave few who would not budge before us in spite of our
+numbers, sent an officer to them to ask them to surrender, promising them
+all the honours of war. But they sent us word to come and take them if we
+could. And then our officer asked them three times if they would hold up
+their hands, and at the third time a grim sergeant rose and answered him:
+'Aye, we will hold up our hands, but when we do, by God, you'll find a
+bayonet in 'em. Go back and tell your commandant that Australia's here to
+stay.' And there they stayed, and fought us hour by hour, holding us back,
+when but for them victory would have been with us. We shelled them all
+along their scattered line, and tried to rush them under cover of the
+artillery fire; but they only held their posts with stouter hearts, and
+shot the straighter when the fire was hottest, and we could do nothing but
+lie there and swear at them, though we admired them for their stubborn
+pluck. They held the hill till all their men were safe, and then, dashing
+down the other side, they jumped into their saddles and made off, carrying
+their wounded with them. They were but twenty men, and we four hundred"
+
+A "Tommy" sitting at the speaker's feet looked up and said: "What are yer
+makin' sich a song abart it far? Lumme, them Horstraliars are as Hinglish
+has hi ham!"
+
+
+
+
+
+                            IN A BOER TOWN.
+
+                                                                   BETHANY.
+
+
+A Boer town is not laid out on systematic lines, as one sees towns in
+America, or Canada, or Australia. The streets seem to run much as they
+please, or as the exigencies of traffic have caused them to run. I doubt if
+the plan of a town is ever drawn in this country. People arrive and settle
+down in a happy-go-lucky manner, and straightway build themselves a home.
+Their homes are places to live in; not to look at. There is an almost utter
+absence of architectural adornment everywhere. My eyes range over a large
+number of dwellings. They are nearly all alike--plain, square structures,
+plastered snow white. There is a double door in the centre of the front,
+and a window at each side of the door. A stoep, about six feet wide, rises
+a foot from the pathway, and there is nothing else to be seen from the
+outside front. These houses look bare and bald, and are as expressionless
+as a blind baby. To me most houses have an expression of their own. In an
+English town a quiet walk in the dawning, making a survey of the
+dwelling-places, always leaves the impression that I have gleaned an
+insight into the character of the dwellers therein. The cheeky-looking
+villa, with its superabundance of ornament, is a monument in masonry to the
+successful mining jobber on a small scale. The solemn-looking, solid
+dwelling, standing in its own grounds, where every flower bush has its
+individual prop, where the lawn is trimmed with mathematical exactitude,
+and not one vagrant leaf is allowed to stray, speaks with a kind of
+brick-and-mortar eloquence of virtue that has never grasped the sublime
+fulness of the Scriptural text which saith: "The way of transgressors is
+hard!" That is the home of the middle-aged Churchman, whose feet from
+infancy have fallen amidst roses. He has never erred, because he has never
+known enough of human sympathy and human toil and struggle to feel
+temptation. The coy little cottage further on, surrounded by climbing roses
+and sweet-smelling herbs, where the gate is left just a little bit open, as
+if inviting a welcome, seems to advertise itself as the home of two maiden
+sisters, who, though past the giddy girlhood stage, still have hopes of
+being somebody's darling by-and-by.
+
+But in a Boer town most of the piety is knocked out of a man. You stare at
+the houses, and they stare back at you dumbly. There is nothing pretentious
+or rakish about any of them; no matter how riotous a man's imagination
+might be, he could never conjure up a "wink" from a Boer house, though I
+have seen houses in other parts of the world that seemed to "cock an eye"
+at a passing traveller and invite him to try the door.
+
+They have only two styles of roofing their dwellings--either the
+old-fashioned gable roof, or the still older kind of "lean-to," the latter
+being nothing but a flat top, high at the front and running lower towards
+the back, in order that the rain water may carry off rapidly. They paint
+their doors and windows a sober reddish brown, for your true Boer has an
+utter contempt for anything gaudy or gay. He leaves that sort of thing to
+his nigger servants, who make up for their master's lack of appreciation in
+the matter of colour by rigging themselves out in anything that is
+startling in the way of contrasts, for if the white master is a Puritan in
+such things, the nigger servant, male and female, is a perfect sybarite.
+
+Right opposite where I am sitting a family group, or all that is left of
+the family, is sitting, as the custom is at evening, out on the stoep. On
+the side nearest me is a young widow. I have made inquiries concerning her.
+Her husband was killed fighting against our troops at Graspan. She, poor
+thing, is dressed in deepest mourning. Her dress is made of some heavy
+black material, and has no touch of white or any colour anywhere to relieve
+its sombre shades. On her head she wears a jet black cap, which rises high
+and wide, and falls around her neck and shoulders. The cap is fashioned
+much after the style of the sun bonnets worn by the peasant women of
+Normandy, but hers is black, black as the grave. She has rather a nice
+face, a good woman's face, pale and refined by suffering. No one looking at
+her can doubt that she has suffered, and suffered as only such women can,
+through this brutal, bloody war. I thought of the widows away in our own
+land as I looked at her sitting there, so silently and sadly, with her thin
+white hands clasped on the black folds of her lap. On one hand I plainly
+saw the gold circle shining, which a few months ago had meant so much to
+her; now, alas! only the outward and visible sign of all she had been and
+of all that she had lost. Behind her the snow-white wall of the house,
+sparkling in the red rays of the setting sun; at her feet only the white
+slate of the stoep. And well enough I knew that under the proud Empire flag
+many a widow as young and as heart-broken as this Dutch girl would watch
+the sun go down as hopelessly as she, and I could not help the thought
+which sprang to my soul--God's bitter curse rest on the head of the man, be
+he Boer or Briton, who brought about this cruel war.
+
+On the street in front of the house where the widow sat I noticed a group
+of niggers. Some of them were merely local "boys," who worked for the
+townspeople. They were dressed in the usual nigger fashion, in old store
+clothing, patched or ventilated according to the wearer's taste. One fellow
+had on a pair of pants that had at some former stage belonged to a man
+about four times his size. The portion of those pants which is usually
+hidden when a man is sitting in the saddle had been worn into a huge hole,
+which the nigger had picturesquely filled by tacking on a scarlet shawl. As
+the pants were made of navy blue serge the effect was unquestionably
+artistic, especially as the amateur tailor had done his sewing with string,
+most of the stitches running from an inch to an inch and a half in length.
+Still, he was only one of many in similar case, so that he did not feel in
+the least degree lonely. There were other niggers there--"boys" belonging
+to the mule-drivers of the army. These "boys" nearly all sported a military
+jacket and some sort of field service cap, which they had picked up somehow
+in camp. The "side" these niggers put on when they get inside odds and ends
+of military wearing apparel is something appalling. They swagger around
+amongst the civilian niggers, and treat them as beings of a very inferior
+mould, whilst the lies they tell concerning their individual acts of
+heroism would set the author of "Deadwood Dick" blushing out of simple
+envy.
+
+The nigger girls cluster round these black veterans like flies around a
+western water hole in midsummer, and their shrill laughter makes the air
+fairly vibrate as they bandy jests with the cheeky herds. The girls are
+rather pleasing in appearance, though far from being pretty. As a rule,
+they wear clean print dresses and white aprons; they never wear hats of any
+kind, but coil a showy kerchief around their heads in coquettish fashion.
+They are not particular as to colour, red, blue, yellow, or pink, anything
+will do as long as it is brilliant. The skins of the girls are almost as
+varied as the headgear. The Kaffir girl is very dark, almost black. The
+bushman's daughter is dirty yellow, like river water in flood time. Some of
+the other tribes are as black as the record of a first-class burglar, but
+they have bright black eyes, which they roll about as a kitten rolls a ball
+of wool in playtime.
+
+But whether they are black, brown, or coffee-coloured, they are all alike
+in one respect--every daughter of them has a mouth that is as boundless as
+a mother's blessing, and as limitless as the imagination of a spring poet
+in love. When they are vexed they purse that mouth up into a bunch until it
+looks like a crumpled saddle-flap hanging on a hedge. When they are pleased
+the mouth opens and expands like an indiarubber portmanteau ready for
+packing; that is when they smile, but when they laugh their ears have to
+shift to give the mouth a chance to get comfortably to its destination.
+They have beautiful teeth, the white ivory showing against the black
+foreground like fresh tombstones in an old cemetery on a dark night. It is
+amusing to watch them flirting with the soldier niggers. They try to look
+coy, but soon fall victims to the skilful blandishments of the
+vain-glorious warriors, and after a little manoeuvring they put out their
+lips to be kissed, a sight which might well make even a Scotch Covenanter
+grin. They suck their lips in with a sharp hissing breath; then push them
+out suddenly, ready for the osculatory seance, the lips moving as if they
+were pushed from the inside by a pole. The "boys" enjoy the picnic
+immensely. As a matter of fact, these "boys" always seem to me to be doing
+one of four things. They are either eating, smoking, sleeping, or making
+love; and they do enough love-making in twenty-four hours to last an
+ordinary everyday sort of white man four months, even if he puts in a
+little overtime. One of the most charming things noticeable about a Boer
+town is the plenitude of trees in the streets. They are often ornamental,
+always useful for purposes of shade. There is no regularity about their
+distribution; they seem to have been planted spasmodically at odd times and
+at odd positions. There is little about them to lead one to the belief that
+they receive over much care after they have been put into the soil. I have
+found a very creditable library in pretty nearly every Boer town that I
+have visited, and it is a noteworthy fact that all of our most cherished
+authors find a place on their book-shelves. One other thing I have also
+noticed, which, though a small thing in itself, is yet very significant. In
+nearly every hotel, and in many of the public places, portraits of our
+Queen and members of the Royal Family have been hanging side by side with
+portraits of notable men, such as Mr. Gladstone, Lord Salisbury, Mr.
+Chamberlain, and Mr. Rhodes. During the course of the war all kinds and
+conditions of Boers have had free access to the rooms where those portraits
+were to be seen, but now I find that no damage has been done to any of
+those pictures, excepting those of Mr. Rhodes and Mr. Chamberlain. This has
+not been an oversight on the part of the Boers, for I defy any person to
+find a solitary picture of the two last-named gentlemen that has not been
+hacked with knives. But the Queen and Royal Family photos have in every
+case been treated with respect.
+
+
+
+
+
+                             BEHIND THE SCENES.
+
+                                                                 STORMBERG.
+
+
+I am writing this from Stormberg, a tremendously important military
+position, which was taken on Monday, the 5th, by General Gatacre, without a
+blow, the enemy falling back cowed by the British general's tactics. Had
+they remained here another twenty-four hours Gatacre would have had them in
+a ring of iron, but the Boer general is no fool. He saw his danger, and,
+like a wise man, he dodged it. Gatacre's generalship was simply superb. Let
+the idiotic band of critics who sit in safety in England howl to their
+heart's content; Gatacre deserves well of his country. Had he dashed
+recklessly into this hornet's nest he would have sacrificed four-fifths of
+his gallant officers and a host of his men. Had I to write his military
+epitaph to-day I should say that "he won with brains what most generals
+would have won with blood."
+
+Strangely enough, I was a prisoner in the very room where I am penning this
+epistle only last Saturday night. I left here in the centre of a Boer
+commando, with a bandage over my eyes, on Sunday morning, and returned to
+the spot surrounded by British "Tommies" a few days later.
+
+All the glory of this bloodless victory does not rest with the general who
+commands the column. To Captain Tennant no small meed of praise is due.
+This officer was here on secret service before hostilities commenced, and
+he did his work so thoroughly that the country is as familiar to him as
+paint to a barmaid. He is one of those men, unfortunately so rare in the
+British Army, combining dash and dauntless pluck with a cool, level head.
+If he gets his opportunity, England will hear more of this officer. I have
+been intensely struck by the class of officers by whom General Gatacre is
+surrounded. They all look like soldiers. I have not seen a single dude, not
+one of those wretched fops of whom I have seen only too many in South
+Africa. They speak like soldiers too. No idiotic drawl, no effeminate lisp,
+no bullying, ill-bred, coarseness of tongue; they are neither drawing-room
+dandies nor camp swashbucklers, but officers and gentlemen--and, I can
+assure you, the terms are not always synonymous, even under the Queen's
+cloth. I have seen mere lads in this country leading men into action who in
+point of brains were not fit to lead a mule to water, and others who, in
+regard to manners, were scarcely fit to follow the mule. But, thank God,
+the Boers have taught our nation this, if they have taught us nought
+else--that it needs something more than an eye-glass, a lisp, a pair of kid
+gloves, and an insolent, overbearing manner to make a successful soldier.
+
+But let me get amongst the Boers. I was only a prisoner in their hands for
+about a month, yet every moment of that time was so fraught with interest
+that I fancy I picked up more of the real nature of the Boers than I should
+have done under ordinary circumstances in a couple of years. I was moved
+from laager to laager along their fighting line, saw them at work with
+their rifles, saw them come in from more than one tough skirmish, bringing
+their dead and wounded with them, saw them when they had triumphed, and saw
+them when they had been whipped; saw them going to their farms, to be
+welcomed by wife and children; saw them leaving home with a wife's sobs in
+their ears, and children's loving kisses on their lips. I saw some of these
+old greyheads shattered by our shells, dying grimly, with knitted brows and
+fiercely clenched jaws; saw some of their beardless boys sobbing their
+souls out as the life blood dyed the African heath. I saw some passing over
+the border line which divides life and death, with a ring of stern-browed
+comrades round them, leaning upon their rifles, whilst a brother or a
+father knelt and pressed the hand of him whose feet were on the very
+threshold of the land beyond the shadows. I saw others smiling up into the
+faces of women--the poor, pain-drawn faces of the dying looking less
+haggard and worn than the anguish-stricken features of their womanhood who
+knelt to comfort them in that last awful hour--in the hour which divides
+time from eternity, the sunlight of lusty life from the shadows of
+unsearchable death. Those things I have seen, and in the ears of English
+men and English women, let me say, as one who knows, and fain would speak
+the plain, ungilded truth concerning friend and foe, that, not alone
+beneath the British flag are heroes found. Not alone at the breasts of
+British matrons are brave men suckled; for, as my soul liveth--whether
+their cause be just or unjust, whether the right or the wrong of this war
+be with them, whether the blood of the hundreds who have fallen since the
+first rifle spoke defiance shall speak for or against them at the day of
+judgment--they at least know how to die; and when a man has given his life
+for the cause he believes in he is proven worthy even of his worst enemy's
+respect. And it seems to me that the British nation, with its long roll of
+heroic deeds, wrought the whole world over, from Africa to Iceland, can
+well afford to honour the splendid bravery and self-sacrifice of these
+rude, untutored tillers of the soil. I have seen them die.
+
+Once, as I lay a prisoner in a rocky ravine all through the hot afternoon,
+I heard the rifles snapping like hounds around a cornered beast. I watched
+the Boers as they moved from cover to cover, one here, one there, a little
+farther on a couple in a place of vantage, again, in a natural fortress, a
+group of eight; so they were placed as far as my eye could reach. The
+British force I could not see at all; they were out on the veldt, and the
+kopjes hid them from me; but I could hear the regular roll and ripple of
+their disciplined volleys, and in course of time, by watching the actions
+of the Boers, I could anticipate the sound. They watched our officers, and
+when the signal to fire was given they dropped behind cover with such speed
+and certainty that seldom a man was hit. Then, when the leaden hail had
+ceased to fall upon the rocks, they sprang out again, and gave our fellows
+lead for lead. After a while our gunners seemed to locate them, and the
+shells came through the air, snarling savagely, as leopards snarl before
+they spring, and the flying shrapnel reached many of the Boers, wounding,
+maiming, or killing them; yet they held their position with indomitable
+pluck, those who were not hit leaping out, regardless of personal danger,
+to pick up those who were wounded. They were a strange, motley-looking
+crowd, dressed in all kinds of common farming apparel, just such a crowd as
+one is apt to see in a far inland shearing shed in Australia, but no man
+with a man's heart in his body could help admiring their devotion to one
+another or their loyalty to the cause they were risking their lives for.
+
+One sight I saw which will stay with me whilst memory lasts. They had
+placed me under a waggon under a mass of overhanging rock for safety, and
+there they brought two wounded men. One was a man of fifty, a hard old
+veteran, with a complexion as dark as a New Zealand Maori; the beard that
+framed the rugged face was three-fourths grey, his hands were as rough and
+knotted by open air toil as the hoofs of a working steer.
+
+He looked what he was--a Boer of mixed Dutch and French lineage. Later on I
+got into conversation with him, and he told me a good deal of his life. His
+father was descended from one of the old Dutch families who had emigrated
+to South Africa in search of religious liberty in the old days, when the
+country was a wilderness. His mother had come in an unbroken line from one
+of the noble families of France who fled from home in the days of the
+terrible persecution of the Huguenots. He himself had been many
+things--hunter, trader, farmer, fighting man. He had fought against the
+natives, and he had fought against our people. The younger man was his son,
+a tall, fair fellow, scarcely more than a stripling, and I had no need to
+be a prophet or a prophet's son to tell that his very hours were numbered.
+Both the father and the lad had been wounded by one of our shells, and it
+was pitiful to watch them as they lay side by side, the elder man holding
+the hand of the younger in a loving clasp, whilst with his other hand he
+stroked the boyish face with gestures that were infinitely pathetic. Just
+as the stars were coming out that night between the clouds that floated
+over us the Boer boy sobbed his young life out, and all through the long
+watches of that mournful darkness the father lay with his dead laddie's
+hand in his. The pain of his own wounds must have been dreadful, but I
+heard no moan of anguish from his lips. When, at the dawning, they came to
+take the dead boy from the living man, the stern old warrior simply pressed
+his grizzled lips to the cold face, and then turned his grey beard to the
+hard earth and made no further sign; but I knew well that, had the
+sacrifice been possible, he would gladly have given his life to save the
+young one's.
+
+
+
+
+
+                      A BOER FIGHTING LAAGER.
+
+                                                              BURGHERSDORP.
+
+
+Many and wonderful are the stories written and published concerning the
+Boer and his habits when on the war-path. Most of these stories are written
+by men who take good care never to get within a hundred miles of the
+fighting line, but content themselves with an easy chair, a cigar, a bottle
+of whisky, and carpet slippers on the stoep of some good hotel in a pretty
+little Boer town. To scribes of this calibre flock a certain class of
+British resident, who is always full to the very ears of his own dauntless
+courage, his deathless loyalty to the Queen and Empire, his love for the
+soldier, and his hatred of the Boer. This gallant class of British resident
+has half a million excuses ready to his hand to explain why he did not take
+a rifle and fight when the war summons rang clarion-like through the land.
+Then he grits his teeth, knits his eyebrows, clenches his hands in
+spasmodic wrath, throws out his chest, and tells his auditors, in a voice
+husky with concentrated wrath and whisky, what he intends to do the next
+time the damnable Boer rises to fight. The old British pioneer may have
+whelped a few million good fighting stock in his time, but this class of
+animal is no lion's whelp; it is a thing all mouth and no manners, a
+shallow-brained, cowardly creature, always howling about the Boer, but too
+discreet to go out and fight him, though ready at all times to malign him,
+to ridicule him as a farmer or a fighter, and it is a perfect bear's feast
+to this hybrid animal to get hold of a gullible newspaper correspondent to
+tell him gruesome tales relative to Boer fighting laagers.
+
+I had one of this peculiar species at me the other day in Burghersdorp, and
+he painted a Boer laager so vividly, between nips at my flask, that if I
+had not seen a few laagers myself I should have felt bad over the matter.
+He pictured the smell of that laager in language so intense, with gestures
+so graphic, that some of his auditors had to hold their nostrils with
+handkerchiefs, whilst they stirred the circumambient atmosphere with
+cardboard fans, and I could not help wondering, if the portrait of the
+smell was so awful, what the thing itself must be like. Flushed with
+success, the narrator pursued his subject to the bitter extremity. He
+conjured up scenes of half-buried men lying amongst the rocks surrounding
+the laager: here a leg, there an arm, further on a ghastly human head
+protruding from amidst the scattered boulders, until I had only to close my
+eyes to fancy I was in a charnel-house, where Goths and Huns were holding
+devilish revelry. The B.R. paused, and dropped his voice two octaves lower,
+and the crowd on the balcony craned their heads further forward, so that
+they might not miss a single word. He told of the women in the laagers, the
+wild, unholy mirth of women, who moved from camp fire to camp fire, with
+dishevelled hair streaming down their backs, with tossing arms, bare to the
+shoulders, and blood besmeared, not the blood of goats or kine, but the
+blood of soldiers--our soldiers. Thomas Atkins defunct, and done for by the
+she-furies.
+
+He waded in again when the shudder which shook the crowd had died away, and
+hinted, as that class of shallow-souled creature loves to hint, of orgies
+under the dim light of the stars, or between the flickering light of
+smoking camp fires, until the sins of Sodom and Gomorrah seemed to be
+crowding all around us in a peculiarly beastly and uncomfortable fashion.
+Then he lay back in his chair and sighed; but anon he sprang upright, and,
+with flashing eyes and extended arms, wanted to know what the ---- Roberts
+meant by offering peace with honour to such a people. "Mow them down!" he
+yelled. "Shoot them on sight--no quarter for such devils! Kill 'em off!
+kill 'em off! kill 'em off!" and he half sobbed, half sighed himself into
+silence, whilst the audience gazed on him as on one who knew what war,
+wild, red, carmine war, was. I broke in on his stillness, as newspaper men
+who know the game are apt to do, for I wanted data, I wanted facts, and I
+had not swallowed his yarn as freely as he had swallowed my whisky.
+
+"Born in this country?" I asked.
+
+"Yorkshire," he answered laconically.
+
+"Been in Africa long?"
+
+"'Bout five years."
+
+"Where did you put in most of your time before
+the war?"
+
+"Johannesburg."
+
+"Mines?"
+
+"No."
+
+"Merchant?"
+
+"No."
+
+"Hotel-keeper, perhaps?"
+
+"No."
+
+"Shopkeeper?"
+
+"No."
+
+"What was your calling, or profession, or business, or means of
+livelihood?"
+
+"General agent, sharebroker, correspondent for some local papers."
+
+H'm; I knew the class of animal well--general jackal; do the dirty work of
+any trade, and master of none.
+
+"Where were you when the war broke out?"
+
+He scowled savagely: "Johannesburg."
+
+"Have the same hatred for the Boers before the war as you have now?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Why didn't you pick up a rifle and have a hand in the fighting?"
+
+"I'm not a blessed 'Tommy,' sir! Do you take me for a d---- 'Tommy,' sir?"
+
+"No; oh, no, I assure you I did nothing of the kind. But--er, have you been
+in the hands of the Boers since the war started?"
+
+"Yes, until our troops marched in here a day or two ago."
+
+"H'm. Did they rob you?"
+
+"No."
+
+"Did they ill-treat you--knock you about, and that sort of thing?"
+
+"No."
+
+"Why do you hate them so bitterly, then?"
+
+"Oh, I can't stand a cursed Boer at any price. Thinks he's as good as a
+Britisher all the time, and puts on side; and he's a cursed tyrant in his
+heart, and would rub us out if he could."
+
+"Yes, the Boer thought himself as good a man as the Britishers he met out
+this way," I replied, "and he backed his opinion with his life and his
+rifle. Why didn't you do the same if you reckoned yourself a better man?"
+
+"Why should I; don't we pay 'Tommy' to do that for us?"
+
+"Perhaps we do; but, concerning those Boer laagers you have been telling us
+about: where, when, and how did you see them; what was the name of the
+place; who was the Boer general in command, or the field cornet, or
+landdrost? I did not know the Boers gave British refugees the free run of
+their war laagers, and I'm interested in the matter, being a scribe myself
+and a man of peace. Just give me a few names and dates and facts, will
+you?"
+
+"No, I won't," he snarled. "You seem to doubt my word, you do, and I'm as
+good a Britisher as you are any day, and you think you can come along and
+pump information out of me for nothing; but I'm too fly for that--they
+don't breed fools in Yorkshire."
+
+"Well, sir, as it seems to suit your temper," I said as sweetly as I could,
+"I'll make it a business proposition. I'll bet you fifty pounds to five you
+have never put your head inside a Boer laager in war time in your life. If
+you have, just name it and give me a few facts."
+
+The B.R. rose wrathfully and muttered something about it being a d---- good
+job for me that I was a wounded man and had one arm in a sling, or he'd
+show me a heap of things in the fistic line which I should remember for the
+rest of my life; but as I only laughed he slouched off, and now, when we
+meet in the street, we pass without speaking. But I got his history, all
+the same, from one of the Cape Police, who told me the beggar had refused
+to join a volunteer regiment when the war broke out, and had remained the
+whole time in a quiet little Boer village as a British refugee, and had not
+seen the outside, let alone the inside, of a Boer fighting laager in all
+his lying life. Yet such cravens at times help to make history--of a kind.
+
+Possibly it may interest Englishmen--and women, too, for that matter--to
+know what a fighting laager is like, and as I have seen half a dozen of
+them from the enemies' side of the wall, a rough pen and ink sketch may not
+be amiss. In war time the Boer never, under any circumstances, makes his
+laager in the open country if there are any kopjes about. No matter how
+secure he may fancy himself from attack, no matter if there is not a foe
+within fifty miles of him, the Boer commander always pitches his laager in
+a place of safety between two parallel lines of hills, so that no attack
+can be made upon him, either front or rear, without giving him an immense
+advantage over the attacking force, even if the enemy is ten times as
+strong in numbers. By this means the Boers make their laagers almost
+impregnable. If they have a choice of ground, they pick a narrow ravine, or
+gully, with a line of hills front and rear, covered with small rocky
+boulders and bushes. They drive their waggons along the ravine, and make a
+sort of rude breastwork across the gully with the waggons. In between these
+waggons the women are placed for safety, for it is a noticeable fact that
+very large numbers of women have followed their husbands and fathers to the
+war, not to act as viragoes, not to play the wanton, not to unsex
+themselves, not to handle the rifle, but to nurse the wounded, to comfort
+the dying, and to lay out the dead. I have heard them singing round the
+camp fires in the starlight, but it was hymns that they sang, not ribald
+songs. I have seen them kneeling by the side of men in the moonlight, not
+in wantonness, but in mercy, and many a man who wears the British uniform
+to-day can bear me witness that I speak the truth.
+
+The Boer never, if he can help it, allows himself to be separated from his
+horse; and these hardy little animals, mostly about fifteen hands high, and
+very lightly framed, are picketed close to the spot where the rider
+deposits his rifle and blankets. If they allow them to graze on the
+hillsides during the day, they run a rope through the halter near the
+horse's muzzle, and tie it close above the knee-joint of the near fore-leg.
+By this means the horse can graze in comfort, but cannot move away at any
+pace beyond a slow walk, and so are easily caught and saddled if required
+in a hurry. The oxen and sheep to be used for slaughtering purposes are
+driven up close to the camp; a waggon or two is drawn across the ravine
+above and below them, and they cannot then stampede if frightened by
+anything, unless they climb the rocky heights on either side of them, which
+they have small chance of doing, as the Kaffir herdsmen sleep on the hills
+above them. Having pitched his laager, the commander sends out his scouts;
+some amble off on horseback at a pace they call a "tripple"--a gait which
+all the Boers educate their nags to adopt. It is not exactly an amble, but
+a cousin to it, marvellously easy to the rider, whilst it enables the nag
+to get over a wonderful lot of ground without knocking up. It also allows
+the horse to pick his way amongst rocky ground, and so save his legs, where
+an English, Indian, or Australian horse would be apt to cripple himself in
+very short order. As soon as the mounted scouts set off on their journey,
+holding the reins carelessly in the left hand, their handy little Mauser
+rifles in their right, swaying carelessly in the saddle after the fashion
+of all bush-riders the world over, the foot scouts take up their positions
+amongst the rocks and shrubs on the hills in front and rear of the laager.
+Each scout has his rifle in his hand, his pipe in his teeth, his bandolier
+full of cartridges over his shoulder, and his scanty blanket under his left
+arm. No fear of his sleeping at his post. He is fighting for honour, not
+for pay; for home, not for glory; and he knows that on his acuteness the
+lives of all may depend. He knows that his comrades and the women trust
+him, and he values the trust as dearly as British soldier ever did. No
+matter how tired he may be, no matter how famished, the Boer sentinel is
+never faithless to his orders.
+
+When the scouts are out the laager is fixed for the night--not a very
+exhaustive proceeding, as the Boers do not go in for luxuries of any kind.
+Here a tarpaulin is stretched over a kind of temporary ridge pole, blankets
+are tossed down on the hard earth, saddles are used for pillows, and the
+couch is complete. A little way farther down the line a rude canvas screen
+is thrown over the wheels of a waggon, and a family, or rather husband and
+wife, make themselves at home under the waggon; whilst the single men
+simply throw themselves at full length on the ground, wrap their one thin,
+small blanket round them, and smoke and jest merrily enough, whilst the
+Kaffirs light the fires and make the coffee. There is scarcely any timber
+in this part of Africa, and the fuel used is the dried manure of cattle
+pressed into slabs about fifteen inches long, eight inches wide, and three
+inches thick. The smoke from the fires is very dense, and soon fills the
+air with a pungent odour, which is not unpleasant in the open, but would be
+simply intolerable in a building. The coffee is soon made, and the simple
+meal begins; it consists of "rusks," a kind of bread baked until it becomes
+crisp and hard, and plenty of steaming hot coffee. I never saw any people
+so fond of this beverage as the Boers are. The Australian bushman and
+digger loves tea, and can almost exist upon it; but these Boers cling to
+coffee. They live, when out in laager, like Spartans, they dress anyhow,
+sleep anyhow, and eat just rusks and precious little else. Talk about
+"Tommy" and his hard times, why a private soldier at the front sleeps
+better, dresses better, and eats better than a Boer general; yet never once
+did I hear a Boer complain of hardships. After tea the Boers sit about and
+clean their rifles; the women move from one little group to another,
+chatting cheerfully, but I saw nothing in their conduct, or in the conduct
+of any man towards one of them, that would cause the most chaste matron in
+Great Britain to blush or droop her eyes. There is in the laager an utter
+absence of what we term soldierly discipline; men moved about, went and
+came in a free and easy fashion, just as I have seen them do a thousand
+times in diggers' camps. There was no saluting of officers, no stiffness,
+no starch anywhere. The general lounges about with hands in pockets and
+pipe in mouth; no one pays him any special deference. He talks to the men,
+the striplings, and the women, and they talk back to him in a manner which
+seems strange to a Britisher familiar to the ways of military camps. After
+the chatting, the pridikant, or parson, if there is one in the laager,
+raises his hands, and all listen with reverent faces whilst the man of God
+utters a few words in a solemn, earnest tone; then all kneel, and a prayer
+floats up towards the skies, and a few moments later the whole camp is
+wrapped in sleep, nothing is heard but the neighing of horses, the lowing
+of cattle, the bleating of sheep, and the occasional barking of a dog.
+There is no clatter of arms, no ringing of bugles, no deep-toned challenge
+of sentries, no footfall of changing pickets.
+
+At regular intervals men rise silently from the ranks of the sleepers, pick
+up their rifles noiselessly, and silently, like ghosts, slip out into the
+deep shadows of the kopjes, and other men, equally silent, glide in from
+posts they have been guarding, and stretch themselves out to snatch slumber
+whilst they may. At dawn the men toss their blankets aside, and spring up
+ready dressed, and move amongst their horses; the Kaffirs attend to the
+morning meal, the everlasting rusks and coffee are served up, horses are
+saddled, cattle are yoked to waggons, and in the twinkling of an eye the
+camp is broken up, and the irregular army is on the march again, with
+scouts guarding every pass in front, scouts watching (themselves unseen) on
+every height. They travel fast, because they travel light; they use very
+little water, because they find it impossible to move it from place to
+place. Many critics charge them with habits of personal uncleanliness. It
+is true that in their laagers one does not see as much soap and water used
+as in our camps, but this is possibly due to want of opportunity as much as
+to want of inclination. In sanitary matters they are neglectful. I did not
+see a single latrine in any of their laagers, nor do I think they are in
+the habit of making them, and to this cause and to no other I attribute the
+large amount of fever in their ranks. They do not seem to understand the
+first principles of the laws of sanitation, and had this season been a wet,
+instead of a peculiarly dry one, I venture to assert that typhoid fever
+would have wrought far more havoc amongst them than our rifles.
+
+I saw no literature in laager except Bibles. I witnessed no sports of any
+kind, and the only sport I heard them talk about was horse-racing. I saw no
+gambling, heard no blasphemy, noticed no quarrelling or bickering, and can
+only say, from my slight acquaintance with life in Boer laager in war time,
+that it may be rough, it may be irksome, it may not be so fastidiously
+clean as a feather-bed soldier might like it, but I have been in many
+tougher, rougher places, and never heard anyone cry about it.
+
+
+
+
+
+                         THROUGH BOER GLASSES.
+
+                                                              BURGHERSDORP.
+
+
+I had a good many opportunities of chatting with Boers during the time
+which elapsed between my capture and liberation, and had a long talk with
+the President of the Orange Free State, Mr. Steyn; also with several of his
+ministerial colleagues. Their ministers of religion, whom they call
+pridikants, also chatted to me freely, as occasion offered. I had more than
+one interview with their fighting generals. Medical men in their service I
+found very much akin to medical men the world over. They patched up the
+wounded and asked no questions concerning nationality, just as our own
+medicos do. Personally, I must say that I found the Boers first-class
+subjects for Press interviews. They did not know much about journalists and
+the ways of journalism. Possibly had they had more experience in regard to
+"interviews," I should not have found them quite so easy to manage, but it
+never seemed to enter their heads that a man might make good "copy" out of
+a quiet chat over pipes and tobacco. One of their stock subjects of
+conversation was their great General, the man of Magersfontein--General
+Cronje.
+
+"What do you Britishers and Australians think of Cronje?" was a stock
+question with them. "Do you think him a good fighter?"
+
+"Well, yes, unquestionably he is a good fighting man."
+
+"Do you think him as good as Lord Roberts?"
+
+"No. We men of British blood don't think there are many men on earth as
+good as the hero of Candahar."
+
+"Do you think him as good a man as Lord Kitchener?"
+
+"No. Very many of us consider the conqueror of the Soudan to be one who, if
+he lives, will make as great a mark in history as Wellington."
+
+At this a joyous smile would illuminate the face of the Boer. He would
+reply, "Yes, yes; Roberts is a great man, a very great man indeed. So is
+Kitchener, so is General French, so is General Macdonald, so is General
+Methuen. Yet all those five men are attempting to get Cronje into a corner
+where they can capture him. They have ten times as many soldiers as Cronje
+has, ten times as many guns; therefore, what a really great man Cronje must
+be on your own showing."
+
+That was before the fatal 27th of February on which Cronje surrendered.
+
+I often asked them how they, representing a couple of small States, came to
+get hold of the idea that they could whip a colossal Power like Great
+Britain in a life or death struggle; and almost invariably they informed me
+that they had expected that one of the great European Powers would take an
+active part in the struggle on their behalf, and, furthermore, they had
+been taught to think that Britain's Empire was rotten to the core, so much
+so that as soon as war commenced in earnest all her colonies would fall
+away from her and hoist the flag of independence, and that India would leap
+once again into open and bloody mutiny. They expressed themselves as being
+dumbfounded when they heard that Australian troops were rallying under the
+Union Jack, and seemed to feel most bitterly that the men from the land of
+the Southern Cross were in arms against them. "We fell out with England,
+and we thought we had to fight England. Instead we find we have to fight
+people from all parts of the world, Colonials like ourselves. Surely
+Australia and Canada might have kept out of this fight, and allowed us to
+battle it out with the country we had a quarrel with."
+
+"The Canadians and Australians are of British blood."
+
+"Well, what if they are? Ain't plenty of the Cape Volunteers who are
+fighting under President Kruger's banner born of Dutch parents? Yet,
+because they fight against Englishmen, you call them all rebels, and talk
+of punishing them when the war is over, if you win, just because they lived
+on your side of the border and not on ours. Would you ask one Boer to fight
+against another Boer simply because he lived on one side of a river and his
+blood relation lived on the other? You Britishers brag of your pride of
+blood, and draw your fighting stock from all parts of the world in war
+time, but you have no generosity; you won't allow other people to be proud
+of their blood too."
+
+I tried to persuade them that I did not for one moment think that Britain
+would be vindictive towards so-called rebels in the hour of victory, and
+pointed out that, in my small opinion, such a course would be foreign to
+the traditions of the Motherland; and was often met with the retort that if
+England did so the shame would be hers, not theirs. Many a time I was told
+to remember the Jameson raid and the manner in which the Boers treated not
+only the leaders of that band of adventurers, but the men also. "Look
+here," said one old fighting man to me, as he leant with negligent grace on
+his rifle, "I was one of those who helped to corner Jameson and his men,
+and I can tell you that we Boers knew very well that we would have been
+acting within our rights if we had shot Jameson and every man he had with
+him, because his was not an act of war--it was an act of piracy; and had we
+done so, and England had attempted to avenge the deed, half the civilised
+world would have ranged themselves on our side; but we did not seek those
+men's blood; we gave them quarter as soon as they asked for it, and after
+that, though we knew very well they had done all that men could do to
+involve us in a war of extermination with a great nation, we sent their
+leader home to his own country to be tried by his own countrymen, and the
+rank and file we forgave freely. We may be a nation of white savages, but
+our past does not prove it, and if Britain wins in the war now going on she
+will have to be very generous indeed before we will need to blush for our
+conduct."
+
+"Why should not the white population of South Africa be ready to live under
+the protection of Britain? The yoke cannot be so heavy when men of all
+creeds, colours, and nationalities who have lived under that rule for years
+are now ready to volunteer to fight for her, even against you, who have
+admittedly done them no direct wrong?"
+
+"Why should we live under any flag but our own?" replied the old fighting
+man passionately. "We came here and found the country a wilderness in the
+hands of savages; we fought our way into the land step by step, holding our
+own with our rifles; we had to live lives of fearful hardships, facing wild
+beasts and wilder men; we won with the strong hand the land we live in. Why
+should we bow our necks to Britain's yoke, even if it be a yoke of silk?"
+And as he spoke a murmur of deep and earnest sympathy ran through the ranks
+of the Boers who were standing around him.
+
+"You, of course, blame all the Colonials, Australians and others, for
+coming to fight against you?" I asked. "I don't know that I do, or that my
+people do, in a sense," the veteran replied. "It all depends upon the
+spirit which animated them. If your Australians, who are of British blood,
+came here to fight for your Motherland, believing that her cause was a just
+and a holy one, and that she needed your aid, you did right, for a son will
+help his mother, if he be a son worth having; but if the Australians came
+here merely for the sake of adventure, merely for sport, as men come in
+time of peace to shoot buck on the veldt, then woe to that land, for though
+God may make no sign to-day nor to-morrow, yet, in His own time, He will
+surely wring from Australia a full recompense in sweat and blood and tears;
+for whether we be right or wrong, our God knows that we are giving our
+lives freely for what we in our hearts believe to be a holy cause."
+
+"What do you fellows think of Australians as fighters?"
+
+I asked the question carelessly, but the answer that I got brought me to my
+bearings quickly, for then I learnt that more than one gallant Australian
+officer dear to me had fallen, never to rise again, since I had been taken
+prisoner. The man who spoke was little more than a lad, a pale-faced,
+slenderly built son of the veldt. He had tangled curly hair, and big,
+pathetic blue eyes, soft as a girl's, and limbs that lacked the rugged
+strength of the old Boer stock; but there was that nameless "something,"
+that indefinable expression in his face which warranted him a brave man. He
+carried one arm in a sling, and the bandage round his neck hid a bullet
+wound. "The Australians can fight," he said simply. "They wounded me,
+and--they killed my father." Perhaps it was the wind sighing through the
+hospital trees that made the Boer lad's voice grow strangely husky;
+possibly the same cause filled the blue eyes with unshed tears.
+
+"It was in fair fight, lad," I said gently; "it was the fortune of war."
+
+"Yes," he murmured, "it was in fair fight, an awful fight--I hope I'll
+never look upon another like it. Damn the fighting," he broke out fiercely.
+"Damn the fighting. I didn't hate your Australians. I didn't want to kill
+any of them. My father had no ill-will to them, nor they to him, yet he is
+out there--out there between two great kopjes--where the wind always blows
+cold and dreary at night-time." The laddie shuddered. "It makes a man doubt
+the love of the Christ," he said. "My father was a good man, a kind man,
+who never turned the stranger empty-handed from his door, even the Kaffirs
+on the farm loved him; and now he is lying where no one can weep over his
+grave. We piled great rocks on his grave. My cousin and I buried him. We
+had no shovels; we scooped a hole in the hard earth as well as we could, a
+long, shallow hole, and we laid him in it. I took his head and Cousin
+Gustave carried his feet. We folded his hands on his breast, laid his old
+rifle by his side, because he had always loved that gun, and never used any
+other when out hunting. Then we pushed the earth in on him gently with our
+hands, breaking the hard lumps up and crumbling them in our palms, so that
+they should not bruise his poor flesh. He had always been so kind, we could
+not hurt him, even though we knew he was dead, for he had been gentle to
+all of us in life; even the cows and the oxen at home loved him--and now
+who will go back and tell mother and little Yacoba that he is dead, that he
+will come to them no more? Oh, damn the war," the lad called again in his
+pain. "I don't know--only God knows--which side is right or wrong, but I do
+know that the curse of the Christ will rest on the heads of those who have
+made this war for ambition's sake or the greed of gold, and the good God
+will not let the widow and the orphan child go unavenged; blood will yet
+speak for blood, and it must rest either on the heads of Kruger and Steyn,
+or Chamberlain and Rhodes."
+
+"Tell me, comrade, of the Australians who fell. They were my countrymen."
+
+"It was a cruel fight," he said. "We had ambushed a lot of the British
+troops--the Worcesters, I think, they called them. They could neither
+advance nor retire; we had penned them in like sheep, and our field cornet,
+Van Leyden, was beseeching them to throw down their rifles to save being
+slaughtered, for they had no chance. Just then we saw about a hundred
+Australians come bounding over the rocks in the gully behind us. There were
+two great big men in front cheering them on. We turned and gave them a
+volley, but it did not stop them. They rushed over everything, firing as
+they came, not wildly, but as men who know the use of a rifle, with the
+quick, sharp, upward jerk to the shoulder, the rapid sight, and then the
+shot. They knocked over a lot of our men, but we had a splendid position.
+They had to expose themselves to get to us, and we shot them as they came
+at us. They were rushing to the rescue of the English. It was splendid, but
+it was madness. On they came, and we lay behind the boulders, and our
+rifles snapped and snapped again at pistol range, but we did not stop those
+wild men until they charged right into a little basin which was fringed
+around all its edges by rocks covered with bushes. Our men lay there as
+thick as locusts, and the Australians were fairly trapped. They were far
+worse off than the Worcesters, up high in the ravine.
+
+"Our field cornet gave the order to cease firing, and called on them to
+throw down their rifles or die. Then one of the big officers--a, great,
+rough-looking man, with a voice like a bull--roared out, 'Forward
+Australia!--no surrender!' Those were the last words he ever uttered, for a
+man on my right put a bullet clean between his eyes, and he fell forward
+dead. We found later that his name was Major Eddy, of the Victorian Rifles.
+He was as brave as a lion, but a Mauser bullet will stop the bravest. His
+men dashed at the rocks like wolves; it was awful to see them. They smashed
+at our heads with clubbed rifles, or thrust their rifles up against us
+through the rocks and fired. One after another their leaders fell. The
+second big man went down early, but he was not killed. He was shot through
+the groin, but not dangerously. His name was Captain McInnerny. There was
+another one, a little man named Lieutenant Roberts; he was shot through the
+heart. Some of the others I forget. The men would not throw down their
+rifles; they fought like furies. One man I saw climb right on to the rocky
+ledge where Big Jan Albrecht was stationed. Just as he got there a bullet
+took him, and he staggered and dropped his rifle. Big Jan jumped forward to
+catch him before he toppled over the ledge, but the Australian struck Jan
+in the mouth with his clenched fist, and fell over into the ravine below
+and was killed.
+
+"We killed and wounded an awful lot of them, but some got away; they fought
+their way out. I saw a long row of their dead and wounded laid out on the
+slope of a farmhouse that evening--they were all young men, fine big
+fellows. I could have cried to look at them lying so cold and still. They
+had been so brave in the morning, so strong; but in the evening, a few
+little hours, they were dead, and we had not hated them, nor they us. Yes,
+I could have cried as I thought of the women who would wait for them in
+Australia. Yes, I could have shed tears, though they had wounded me, but
+then I thought of my father, and of the mother, and little Yacoba on the
+farm, who would wait in vain for _him_, and then I could feel sorry
+for those, the wives and children of the dead men, no longer."
+
+
+
+
+
+                        LIFE IN THE BOER CAMPS.
+
+                                         HEADQUARTERS, ORANGE RIVER COLONY.
+
+
+It is an article of faith with many people that a Boer commando is a mere
+mob, that its leaders exercise no control over men in laager or on the
+field, and that punishment for crimes is a thing unknown. But this is far
+from being the case. It is quite true that a Boer soldier does not know how
+to click his heels together, turn his toes to an acute angle, stiffen his
+back, and salute every time an officer runs against him. He could not
+properly perform any of the very simplest military evolutions common to all
+European soldiers if his immortal welfare depended upon it. That is why he
+is such a failure as an attacking agent. Still, in spite of these things,
+the Boer on commando has to submit to very rigid laws. The penalty for
+outrage, or attempted outrage, on a woman is instant death on conviction,
+no matter what the woman's nationality may be. For sleeping on sentry duty
+the punishment is unique; it is a punishment born of long dwelling in the
+wilderness. It is of such a nature that no man who has once undergone it is
+calculated ever to forget. When a clear case is made out against a burgher
+by trial before his commandant the whole commando in laager is summoned to
+witness the criminal's reward. He is taken out beyond the lines to a spot
+where the sun shines in all its unprotected fierceness. He is led to an
+ant-hill full of busy, wicked, little crawlers; the top of the ant-hill is
+cut off with a spade, leaving a honeycombed surface for the sleepy one to
+stand upon (not much fear of him sleeping whilst he is there). He is
+ordered to mount the hill and stand with feet close together. His rifle is
+placed in his hands, the butt resting between his toes, the muzzle clasped
+in both hands. Two men are then told off to watch him. They are picked men,
+noted for their stern, unyielding sense of duty and love for the cause they
+fight for.
+
+These guards lie down in the veldt twenty-five yards away from the victim.
+They have their loaded Mausers with them, and their orders are, if the
+prisoner lifts a leg, to put a bullet into it; if he lifts an arm, a bullet
+goes into that defaulting member; if he jumps down from his perch
+altogether, the leaden messengers sent from both rifles will cancel all his
+earthly obligations. The sun shines down in savage mockery; it strikes upon
+the bare neck of the quivering wretch, who dare not lift a hand to shift
+his hat to cover the blistering skin. It strikes in his eyes and burns his
+lips until they swell and feel like bursting. The barrel of his rifle grows
+hotter and hotter, until his fingers feel as if glued to a gridiron. The
+very clothes upon his body burn the skin beneath. He feels desperate; he
+must shift one arm, for the anguish is intolerable. He makes an almost
+imperceptible movement of his shoulder, and glances towards his guards. The
+man on his right front lays his pipe quickly in the grass, and swiftly
+lifts his Mauser to his shoulder. The wretch on the ant-heap closes his
+eyes with a groan, and stands as still as a Japanese god carved out of
+jute-wood. The guard lays down his rifle and picks up his pipe.
+
+The sun climbs higher and higher, until it gleams down straight into the
+ant-heap; the scorching heat penetrates into the unprotected cells, and
+enrages the dwellers inside. They swarm out full of fight, like an army
+lusting for battle. Their home has been ravished of the protection they had
+raised with half a lifetime of labour, and in their puny way they want
+vengeance. They find a foe on top, a man ready to their wrath. They crawl
+into his scorched boots, over his baked feet, guiltless of stockings; they
+charge up the legs, on which the trousers hang loosely, and as they charge
+they bite, because they are out for business, not for a picnic. The very
+stillness of their victim seems to enrage them. The first legion retires at
+full speed down into the ant-heap again. They have gone for recruits. In a
+few seconds up they come again, until the very top of the heap is alive
+with them. They climb one over another in their eagerness to get in their
+individual moiety of revenge. Down into the veldtschoon, up the bare, hairy
+legs, over the hips, round the waist, over the lean ribs, along the spine,
+under the arms, round the neck, over the whole man they go, as the
+Mongolian hordes will some day go over the Western world. And each one digs
+his tiny prongs into the smarting, burning, itching poor devil on top of
+their homestead. He shifts a leg the hundredth part of an inch. The guard
+on the left gives his bandolier a warning twist, and glances along the long
+brown barrel that nestles in the hollow of his left hand.
+
+The commandant comes out of the circle of burghers, looks at the victim,
+sees that the eyes are bloodshot and protruding far beyond the normal
+position. He is not a hard man, but he knows that the culprit has
+endangered the lives and liberties of all. "You will remember this," he
+says sternly; "you will not again sleep when it is your turn to watch."
+"Never, so help me God!" gasps the prisoner. "Stand down, then; you are
+free." Quicker than a swallow's flight is the movement of the liberated
+man. He drops his rifle with a gasp of relief, tears every stitch of
+clothing from his body, throws the garments from him, and pelts his
+veldtschoon after them. Some sympathetic veteran, who has possibly, in
+earlier wars, been through the ordeal himself, runs up with a drink of
+blessed water. He does not drink it; he pours it down his burning throat,
+then sits on the grass, drawing his breath in long, sobbing sighs, all the
+more terrible because they are tearless. From head to heel he is covered
+with tiny red marks, just like a schoolboy who has had the measles; in
+three days there will not be a mark on him, but he won't forget them, all
+the same, not in thirty-three years, or three hundred and thirty-three, if
+he happens to have a memory of any kind at that period.
+
+This mode of punishing recalcitrant persons was picked up, I am told, from
+one of the savage tribes. I do not know if this is so or not, but there is
+no doubt that the niggers know all about it, because one day, when I found
+that one of my niggers had been helping himself lavishly to my tobacco, I
+promised to stand him on an ant-heap as soon as I had finished shaving.
+Five minutes later my other nigger, Lazarus, came into my tent and informed
+me that Johnnie had bolted. I went out, and by the aid of my glasses I
+could just espy a black dot away out on the veldt, making a rapid and
+direct line for the land of the Basutos; and that was the last I ever saw
+or heard of tobacco-loving, work-dodging, truth-twisting Johnnie.
+
+There is a distinctly humorous side to the Boer character, which crops out
+sometimes in his methods of dealing out justice to those who have done the
+thing that seems evil in his sight. If there is a fellow in laager who is
+not amenable to orders, one of those malcontents who desires to have
+everything his own way--and there generally is one of these cherubs in
+every large gathering of men all the world over--the commandant first calls
+him up and warns him that he is making himself a pest to the whole
+commando, and exhorts him to mend his manners. As a general thing the
+commandant throws a few slabs of Scripture appropriate to the occasion at
+the disturber's ears, and mixes it judiciously with a good deal of worldly
+wisdom, all of which tending to teach the fellow that he is about as
+desirable as a comrade as a sore eye in a sand-storm. Should the
+exhortation not have the desired effect, and the offender continue to stir
+up strife in laager, as a lame mule stirs up mud in midstream, then the
+commandant sends a guard of young men to gather in the unruly one. He is
+captured with as little ceremony as a nigger captures a hog in the midst of
+his mealy patch. They strip him bare to the waist, and put a bridle on his
+head; the bit is jammed into his mouth, and firmly buckled there, and then
+the circus begins. One of the guards takes the reins, usually a couple of
+long lengths of raw hide; another flicks the human steed on the bare ribs
+with a sjambok, and he is ordered to show his paces. He has to walk, trot,
+canter, gallop, and "tripple" all around the laager several times, amidst
+the badinage and laughter of the burghers, and he gets enough "chaff"
+during the journey to last the biggest horse in England a lifetime.
+
+It is bad enough when there are only men there, but when there are, as is
+often the case, a dozen or two of women and girls present his woe is served
+up to him full measure and brimming over. The men roar with laughter, and
+pelt him with crusts of rusks, but the women and girls make his life an
+agony for the time being. They smile at him sweetly, and ask him if he
+feels lonely without a cart, or they pull up a handful of grass and offer
+it to him on the end of a stick, making a lot of "stage aside" remarks
+concerning the length of his ears the while, until the fellow's face
+crimsons with shame.
+
+They are wonderfully patriotic, these Boer girls and women, and are
+merciless in their contempt for a man who will not do his share of
+fighting, marching, and watching cheerfully and uncomplainingly. The
+hardships and privations they themselves undergo without murmuring, in
+order to assist their husbands, brothers, and lovers, is worthy of being
+chronicled in the pages of history, for they are the Spartans of the
+nineteenth century. They are swift to help those who need help, but
+unsparing with their scorn for those who are unworthy. The treatment meted
+out to the grumbler and mischief-maker usually presents more of the
+elements of comedy than anything else, and it is his own fault if he does
+not get off lightly. But if he cuts up rough, tries to strike or kick his
+drivers or tormentors, or if he goes in for a course of sulks, and flops
+himself down, refusing to be driven, then the comic element disappears from
+the scene. Out come the sjamboks, and he is treated precisely as a vicious
+or sulky horse would be treated under similar circumstances. As a rule, it
+does not take long to bring a man of that kind to his proper senses. Should
+he talk of deserting or of avenging himself later on, he is watched, and a
+deserter soon learns that a rifle bullet can travel faster than he can. As
+for revenge, the sooner he forgets desires or designs of that kind the
+better for his own health.
+
+For minor offences, such as laziness, neglecting to keep the rifle clean
+and in good shooting order, attempting to strike up a flirtation with a
+married woman, to the annoyance of the lady, or any other little matter of
+the kind, the wayward one is "tossed." Tossing is not the sort of pastime
+any fellow would choose for fun, not if he were the party to be tossed,
+though it is a beanfeast for the onlookers. They manage it this way. A
+hide, freshly stripped from a bullock, smoking, bloody, and limber as a
+bowstring, is requisitioned; the hairy side is turned downwards, two strong
+men get hold of each corner, cutting holes in the green hide for their
+hands to have a good grip; they allow the hide to sag until it forms a sort
+of cradle, into which the unlucky one is dumped neck and crop. Then the
+signal is given, the hide sways to and fro for a few seconds, and then,
+with a skilful jerk, it is drawn as taut as eight pairs of strong arms can
+draw it. If the executioners are skilful at the business the victim shoots
+upwards from the blood-smeared surface like a dude's hat in a gale of wind.
+Sometimes he comes down on his feet, sometimes on his head, or he may
+sprawl face downwards, clutching at the slimy surface as eagerly as a
+politician clutches at a place in power. But his efforts are vain; a couple
+more swings and another jerk, and up he goes, turning and twisting like a
+soiled shirt on a wire fence. This time he comes down on his hands and
+knees, and promptly commences to plead for pity, but before he can open his
+heart a neat little jerk sends him out on his back, where he claws and
+kicks like a jackal in a gin case, whilst the more ribald amongst the
+onlookers sing songs appropriate to the occasion, but the more devout chant
+some such hymn as this:
+
+                    Lord, let me linger here,
+                    For this is bliss.
+
+A man is very seldom hurt at this game, though how he escapes without a
+broken neck is one of the wonders of gravitation to me. One second you see
+the poor beggar in mid air, going like a circular saw through soft pine.
+Just when you are beginning to wonder if he has converted himself into a
+catherine-wheel or a corkscrew, he straightens himself out horizontally,
+remains poised for the millionth part of a second like a he-angel that has
+moulted his wings; then down he dives perpendicularly like a tornado in
+trousers, skinning forehead, nose, and chin as he kisses the drum-like
+surface of the hide. No, on the whole, I do not consider it healthy to try
+to fool with a married woman in a Boer fighting laager, apart altogether
+from the moral aspect of the affair. If some of the amorous dandies I wot
+of, who claim kindred with us, got the same sort of treatment in Old
+England, many a merry matron would be saved much annoyance.
+
+For rank disobedience of orders, brutality of conduct, cowardice in the
+face of the enemy, flagrant neglect of the wounded, or any other very
+serious military crime, the punishment is sjamboking, which is simply
+flogging, as it existed in our Army and Navy not so many years ago. On
+board ship they used to use the "cat," a genteel instrument with a handle
+attached. The Boer sjambok is a different article altogether; it has not
+nine tails, but it gets there just the same. The sjambok dear to the Boer
+soul is that made out of rhinoceros hide. It is a plain piece of hide, not
+twisted in any way; just clean cut out and trimmed round all the way down.
+It is about three feet long, and at the end which the flogger holds it is
+about two and a half inches in circumference, tapering down gradually to a
+rat-tail point. It is a terrible weapon when the person who wields it is
+bent on business, and is not manufacturing poetry or mingling thoughts of
+home and mother with the flogging. Truth to tell, I don't think they do
+much flogging--not half as much as they are credited with--but when they do
+flog, the party who gets it wants a soft shirt for a month after, and it's
+quite a while before he will lie on his back for the mere pleasure of
+seeing the moon rise.
+
+
+
+
+
+                           BATTLE OF CONSTANTIA FARM.
+
+                                                                THABA NCHU.
+
+
+The Battle of Constantia Farm will not rank as one of the big events of
+this war, but it is worthy of a full description, because in this battle
+the Briton for the first time laid himself out from start to finish to
+fight the Boer pretty much on his own lines, instead of following
+time-honoured British rules of war. Before attempting to portray the actual
+fighting, I think a brief sketch of our movements from the time we left the
+railway line to cross the country will be of interest to those readers of
+_The Daily News_ who desire to follow the progress of the war with due
+care.
+
+The Third Division, which had been at Stormberg, and had done such
+excellent, though almost bloodless, work by sweeping the country between
+the last-named place and Bethany, rested at the latter place, and built up
+its full strength by incorporating a large number of men and guns. General
+Gatacre, who had retrieved his reverse at Stormberg by forcing Commandant
+Olivier to vacate his almost impregnable position without striking a blow,
+and later by his masterly move in swooping down on Bethulie Bridge and
+preventing the Boers from wrecking the line of communication between Lord
+Roberts and his supplies from Capetown, only remained long enough with his
+old command to see them equipped in a manner fit to take the field, and
+then retired in favour of General Chermside. It was under this officer that
+we marched away from the railway line across country known to be hostile to
+us. Almost due east we moved to Reddersburg, about twelve and a half miles.
+We had to move slowly and cautiously, because no living man can tell when,
+where, or how a Boer force will attack. They follow rules of their own, and
+laugh at all accepted theories of war, ancient or modern, and no general
+can afford to hold them cheap. A day and a half was spent at Reddersburg,
+and then the Third Division continued its eastward course in wretched
+weather, until Rosendal was arrived at. This is the spot where the Royal
+Irish Rifles and Northumberland Fusiliers had to surrender to the Boers. We
+had to camp there for the best part of three days on account of the
+continuous downpour of rain, which rendered the veldt tracks impassable for
+our transport. To push onward meant the absolute destruction of mules and
+oxen, and the consequent loss of food supplies, without which we were
+helpless, for in that country every man's hand was against us, not only in
+regard to actual warfare, but in regard to forage for man and beast.
+
+Here we were joined by General Rundle with the Eighth Division, which
+brought our force up to about thirteen thousand men, thirty big guns, and a
+number of Maxims. When the weather cleared slightly we moved onward slowly,
+the ground simply clinging to the wheels of the heavily laden waggons,
+until it seemed as if the very earth, as well as all that was on top of it,
+was opposed to our march. Our scouts constantly saw the enemy hovering on
+our front and flanks, and more than once exchanged shots with them. General
+Rundle, who was in supreme command, thus knew that he could not hope to
+surprise the wily foe, for it was evident to the merest tyro that the Boer
+leader was keeping a sharp eye upon our movements, and would not be taken
+at a disadvantage. We expected to measure the enemy's fighting force at any
+hour, but it was not until about half-past ten on the morning of Friday,
+the 20th of April, that we were certain that he meant to measure his arms
+with ours, though early on that morning our scouts had brought in news that
+a commando, believed to be about two thousand five hundred strong, with
+half a dozen guns, commanded by General De Wet, was strongly posted right
+on our line of march. Slowly we crept across the open veldt, our men
+stretching from east to west for fully six miles. There was no moving of
+solid masses of men, no solid grouping of troops; no two men marched
+shoulder to shoulder, a gap showed plainly between each of the khaki-clad
+figures as we moved on to the rugged, broken line of kopjes. There was no
+hurry, no bustle, the men behaved admirably, each individual soldier
+seeming to have his wits about him, and proving it by taking advantage of
+every bit of cover that came in his way. If they halted near an ant-hill,
+they at once put it between themselves and the enemy.
+
+Slowly but steadily they rolled onward, like a great sluggish, but
+irresistible, yellow wave, until we saw the scouts slipping from rock to
+rock up the stony heights of the first line of hills. Breathlessly we
+watched the intrepid "eyes of the army" advance until they stood
+silhouetted against the sky-line on the top of the black bulwarks of the
+veldt. Then we strained our ears to catch the rattle of the enemy's rifles,
+but we listened in vain; and we were completely staggered. What did it
+mean? Was it a trap? Was there some devilish craft behind that apparent
+peacefulness? Trap or no trap, we had not long to wait. The long, yellow
+wave curled inwards from both flanks, the men going forward with quick,
+lithesome steps. The mounted infantry shot forward as if moved by magic,
+and, before the eye could scarcely grasp the details, our fellows held the
+heights, and men marvelled and wondered whether the Boers had bolted for
+good. But they soon undeceived us, for the hills shook with the
+far-reaching roar of their guns, and shells began to make melody which
+devils love; but they did no harm. Not a man was touched. Then came the
+short, sharp word of command from our lines. Officers bit their words
+across the centre, and threw them at the men. The Horse Artillery moved
+into position, some going at a steady trot, others sweeping along the
+valleys as if they were the children of the storm. The left flank swung
+forward and encircled the base of an imposing kopje. The men swarmed up
+with tiger-like activity, quickly, and in broken and irregular lines; but
+there was no confusion, no wretched tangle, no helpless muddle. They did
+not rush madly to the top and stand on the sky-line to be a mark for their
+foes. When they almost touched the summit they paused, formed their broken
+lines, and carefully and wisely topped the black brow; and as they did so
+the Boer rifles spoke from a line of kopjes that lay behind the first. Then
+our fellows dropped to cover, and sent an answer back that a duller foe
+than the Boers would not have failed to understand. The Mauser bullets
+splashed on the rocks, and spat little fragments of lead in all directions;
+but few of them found a resting-place under those thin yellow jackets.
+By-and-by the shells began to follow the Mauser's spiteful pellets, but the
+shells were less harmful even than the little hostile messengers; for,
+though well directed, the shells never burst--they simply shrieked, yelled,
+and buried themselves. Our gunners got the ground they wanted, and soon gun
+spoke to gun in their deep-throated tones of defiance. The Boers were not
+hurting us; whether we were injuring them we could not tell.
+
+In the meantime our whole transport came safely inside a little
+semi-circular valley, and arranged itself with almost ludicrous precision.
+The nigger drivers chaffed one another as the shells made melody above
+their heads, and made the air fairly dance with the picturesque terms of
+endearment they bestowed upon their mules, between the welts they bestowed
+with their long two-handed whips. When two of their leaders jibbed and
+refused to budge, they howled and called them Mr. Steyn and Ole Oom Paul;
+but when they got down solid to their work they laughed until even their
+back teeth were showing beyond the dusky horizon of their lips, and endowed
+them with the names of Cecil Rhodes and Mistah Chamberlain, which may or
+may not appear complimentary to the owners of those titles--anyway, the
+mules did not seem to be offended. One thing was made manifest to me then,
+and confirmed later on, viz., the nigger is a game fellow; give him a
+little excitement, and he is full of "devil"--it's the doing of deeds in
+cold blood that finds him out. After seeing the way the transport was
+handled, I moved along to look at the ambulance arrangements, and found
+them practically perfect. The medical staff was cool and collected, the
+helpers were alert and attentive to business; the waggons, with their
+conspicuous red crosses, were all well and carefully placed--though in such
+a fight it was a sheer impossibility to dispose them so as to render them
+absolutely immune from danger, for shells have a knack of falling where
+least expected, and when they burst he is a wise man who falls flat on his
+face and leaves the rest to his Creator and the fortune of war. My next
+move was to secure a position on the top of a kopje, to try to gather some
+idea concerning the actual strength of the Boer position. It needed no
+soldier's training to tell a man who knew the rugged Australian ranges
+thoroughly that the enemy had chosen his ground with consummate skill. To
+get at the Boers our men had either to go down the sides of the kopjes in
+full view of the clever enemy, or else make their way between narrow
+gullies, where shells would work havoc in their packed ranks. After they
+had reached the open, level ground, they had to cross open spaces of veldt
+commanded by the Boer guns and rifles, whilst the Boers themselves sat
+tight in a row of ranges that ran from east to west, mile after mile, in
+almost unbroken ruggedness. If we turned either flank, they could promptly
+fall back upon another line of kopjes as strong as those they held. Away
+behind their position the grim heights of Thaba Nchu rose towards the blue
+sky, solemn and stately. Far away to the eastward, a little south of east
+perhaps, I could see the hills that hid Wepener, distant about eighteen
+miles from the Boer centre. There we knew, and the enemy knew, that the
+Boers held a British force pinned in. They knew, and we knew, that
+Commandant Olivier, with eight or nine thousand men and a lot of guns, held
+the reins in his hands; and the men our force were engaging knew that
+unless they could keep us in check Olivier would soon be the hunted instead
+of the hunter.
+
+By-and-by the rifle fire on our left flank grew weaker and weaker--our guns
+were searching the kopjes with merciless accuracy--and before sundown it
+died away altogether, and we had time to collect our wounded and ascertain
+our losses, though we could not even guess how the Boers had fared Our
+wounded amounted to eight men all told, none of them dangerously hurt; of
+dead we had none, not one. When their fire slackened the enemy doubtless
+expected to see an onward dash of troops from our position, but it was not
+to be. General Rundle had decided to play "patience" and save his men;
+there was no necessity for him to rush on and force the Boer position, and
+he chose the better part. Steadily our fellows were worked into position,
+until every bit of ground that could bear upon the foe was lined with
+British troops. Every available point, front or flank, where a gun could be
+placed to harass the foe was taken advantage of; nothing was left to
+chance, nothing was rashly hurried. Carefully, methodically the work was
+done. There was to be no carnival of death on our side, no trusting to the
+"luck of the British Army," no headlong rush into the arms of destruction,
+no waving line of bayonets. The Boer was to play a hand with the cards he
+loves to deal. He was to be shelled and sniped. If he wanted straight-out
+fighting, he had to come out into the open and get it. He was to have no
+chance to sit in safety and slaughter the British soldiers like shambled
+deer, as he had so often done before. As the sun went down our men
+bivouacked where they stood, and nothing was heard through the long, cold
+night except at intervals the grim growling of a gun, the sentinels' swift,
+curt challenge, or the neighing of horses as steed spoke to steed across
+the grass-grown veldt.
+
+At the breaking of the dawn I was aroused from sleep by the simultaneous
+crashing of several of our batteries. It was Britain's morning salutation
+to the Boer. I hurried up to a spot on the kopje where a regiment of
+Worcesters lay amongst the broken ground, and saw that the battle was just
+about to commence in deadly earnest. It was a huge, flat-topped kopje where
+I located myself. The outer edges of the hill rose higher than the centre,
+a little rivulet ran across tiny indentations on the crown of that rampart,
+and there was ample space for an army to lie concealed from the eyes of
+enemies. If the Boers were strongly posted, so were the British. Away past
+our right flank Wepener range was plainly visible in the clear morning
+light, and just behind Wepener lay the Basuto border, with its fringe of
+mountains. About two thousand yards away, directly facing our centre, a
+white farmhouse stood in a cluster of trees. This farmhouse gave the
+battlefield its name, Constantia Farm. The enemy could be seen by the aid
+of glasses slipping from the kopjes down towards this farm and back again
+at intervals. Cattle, horses, goats, and sheep went on grazing calmly, the
+roaring of the guns doubtless seeming to them but as the tumult of a storm.
+
+Turning my eyes towards the valley behind our position, I saw that we
+intended to try to turn the enemy's left flank. Little squads of mounted
+men, 95 in each group, swept along the valley at a gallop. They were the
+Yeomanry and mounted infantry, and numbered about 600. A more workmanlike
+body of fellows it would be hard to find anywhere. They sat their horses
+with easy confidence, and looked full of fight. Some of them carried their
+rifles in their hands, muzzle upwards, the butt resting on the right thigh;
+others had their guns slung across their shoulders. Group after group went
+eastward, and the Boers knew nothing of the movement, because we were for
+once employing their own tactics. I watched them out of sight, and then
+turned my attention to the guns. There was very little time wasted by our
+people. The gunners on our left flank poured in a heavy fire, the centre
+took up the chorus, and the guns on the right repeated it. For miles along
+their front the Boers must have been in deadly peril. We seldom saw them.
+Now and again a group of roughly clad horsemen would flash into view and
+disappear again as if by magic, with shells hurtling in their wake. Our
+artillery could not locate their main force with any degree of certainty,
+nor could they place us properly. They were not idle; their guns, of which
+they had a decent number, sought for our position with dauntless
+perseverance. Their shells soon began to drop amongst us, but they did no
+harm at all. They fell close enough to our troops in many instances, but
+they were so badly made that they would not explode, or if they did they
+simply fizzed, and were almost as harmless as seidlitz powders.
+
+The spiteful little pom-poms cracked away and kept us on the alert, until
+one grew weary of the everlasting noise of cannon. At mid-day, tired of the
+monotony of the game, I turned my horse's head towards camp, and, in
+company with three other correspondents, soon sat down to a lunch of
+mealies and boiled fowl; but we were destined not to enjoy that meal, for
+before the first mouthful had left my plate there came a wailing howl
+through the air, then a strange jarring noise, and a shell plunged into the
+earth forty yards away from the tent. A few minutes later another visitor
+from the same direction crashed on top of one of the transport waggons
+within a stone's throw of our tent. That decided me; in a few seconds I had
+scrambled up the side of a kopje, with the leg of a fowl in one hand and a
+soldier's biscuit in the other. The shells had not burst, but no man could
+say when one would, and I had no particular interest in regard to the
+inside of any shell myself. I was not the only one who made a hasty exit
+from the camp; in ten seconds the side of the kopje was alive with men. The
+shells continued to fall right amongst the waggons every few minutes for
+over two hours; yet only one man was killed, a negro driver being the
+victim, a shell dropping right against his thigh. The range of the Boer gun
+was absolutely perfect, but the shells were mere rubbish. Had they been as
+good as ours, half our transport would have been in ruins. The British
+gunners manoeuvred in all directions in order to locate that particularly
+dangerous piece of ordnance. They blazed at it in batteries; they tried to
+find it by means of cross-firing; they lined men up on the sky-line of
+kopjes to draw the fire; they limbered up and galloped far out on the
+veldt, until the enemy's rifle fire drove them in again; but all in vain.
+The Boer leader had placed his gun with such skill that the British could
+not locate it, and it kept up its devilish jubilee until the night set in.
+
+That day our scouts captured one Free State flag from the enemy; the
+Yeomanry and mounted infantry did not succeed in their efforts to turn the
+Boers' left flank, but they checked the enemy from advancing in that
+direction, which was an important item in the day's work. We did not want
+the Boer left to overlap our right; had they done so they could then get
+behind us and harass our convoys coming from the direction of Bethany
+railway station. We had very little dread of them turning our left flank,
+because we knew that General French was moving towards us on that side from
+Bloemfontein, with the object of getting the Boers on the inside of two
+forces, and so giving them no chance of escape. We had only a few men
+wounded, one petty officer of the Scouts killed, and a negro driver killed,
+which was simply marvellous when one considers the terrible amount of
+ammunition used during the day. That night all the correspondents had to
+sleep, or try to sleep, with the transport. It was a wretched night; we
+knew the Boers had the range, and we fully expected to get a hot shelling
+between darkness and dawn, but, curiously enough, the foe kept their guns
+still all the night But the suspense made the night a weary one.
+
+The following day was Sunday, and at a very early hour our scouts informed
+us that the Boers had made a wide detour towards Wepener, and had
+overlapped our right flank. They slipped up into a kopje, which would have
+enabled them to enfilade our position in a most masterly manner; but before
+they could get their guns there our artillery was at them, and the kopje
+was literally ploughed up with shells. It was too warm a corner for any man
+on earth to attempt to hold, and they soon took their departure, falling
+back in good order, and leaving no dead or wounded behind them. The
+Yeomanry had advanced on the kopje, under the protection of the shell
+firing, and when close to the position they fixed bayonets and dashed up
+the hill; but when they topped it they found that the Boers had retired. It
+was a quick bit of work, neatly and expeditiously done. Had the Boers held
+the hill long enough to get their guns in position they would have played
+havoc with us, for they could then have swept our whole line. From morning
+until night-fall we kept at them with our big guns; whenever a cloud of
+dust arose from behind a range of kopjes we dropped shells in the middle of
+it; wherever a cluster of Boers showed themselves for a second a shell
+sought them out. No matter how well they were placed, they must have had a
+lively time of it. During the Sabbath they scarcely used their guns at all,
+but they opened on our troops with rifle fire as soon as they made a
+forward move at any part of the line, showing clearly that they were
+watching as well as praying. The day closed without incident of any
+particular character; we had a few wounded, but no deaths, and could form
+no idea how the Boers were faring. Now and again during the night one or
+another of our guns would bark like sullen watchdogs on the chain, but the
+Boer guns were still.
+
+Monday morning broke crisp and clear, and once more the big-gun duel began,
+only on this occasion the Boers made great use of a pom-pom gun This
+spiteful little demon tossed its diminutive shells into camp with painful
+freeness. They knocked three of the Worcesters over early in the day,
+killing two and badly damaging the other. As on all other occasions in this
+peculiar engagement, the Boer gunnery was simply superb; but their shells
+were worthless. Shells grew so common that the "Tommies" scarcely ducked
+when they heard the report of a gun they knew was trying to reach them, but
+smoked their pipes and made irreverent remarks concerning things made in
+Germany. About midday a party of Boers, who had somehow dodged round to our
+rear, made a dashing attempt to raid some cattle that were grazing close
+under our eyes; but they had to vanish in a hurry, and were particularly
+lucky in being able to escape with their lives, for a party of scouts
+darted out after them at full gallop on one side, whilst another party of
+mounted infantry rode as hard as hoofs could carry them on the other side
+of the bold raiders. They unslung their rifles as they dashed across the
+veldt, and the Boers soon knew that the fellows behind them were as much at
+home as they were themselves at that kind of business.
+
+Late on Monday evening the Boers located a little to the left of our centre
+moved forward a bit. Though with infinite caution, and commenced sniping
+with the rifle. It was an evidence that they were growing weary of our
+tactics, and would greatly have liked us to attempt to rush their position
+with the bayonet, so that they could have mowed our fellows down in
+hundreds. But this General Rundle wisely declined to do; it was victory,
+not glory, he was seeking, and he was wise enough to know that a victory
+can be bought at far too high a price in country of this kind against a foe
+like the wily Boer. On Sunday night our strength was augmented by the
+arrival of three regiments of the Guards, and on Monday night we, knew for
+a certainty that General French was close at hand. The Boer was between two
+fires, and he would need all his "slimness" to pull him out of trouble.
+During a greater part of the night our guns continued to rob sleep of its
+sweetness, and the enemy's pom-pom mingled with our dreams. On Tuesday
+morning news came to us that Wepener had been relieved by Brabant and Hart,
+and that the Boers who had invested that place were drawing off in our
+direction, so that our right flank needed strengthening. The Boers
+displayed no sign of quitting their position, though they must have known
+that Brabant and Hart would be on their track from the south-east, and
+General French from the north-west. They held their ground with a grim
+stubbornness against overwhelming odds of men and guns, and dropped shells
+amongst us in a way that made one feel that no spot could be labelled
+"absolutely safe."
+
+At about 7 p.m. we sent a force out south, consisting of about 4,000 men,
+under General Boyes. Amongst that force were the West Kents, Staffords,
+Worcesters, Manchesters, all infantry. The Imperial Yeomanry and mounted
+infantry also accompanied the expedition. But there was little for them to
+do except hold the enemy in check, which they did. There were some
+phenomenally close shaves during the day. On one occasion the enemy got the
+range of one of our guns with their pom-pom, and the way they dropped the
+devilish little one-pound shells amongst those gunners was a sight to make
+a man's blood run chill. The little iron imps fell between the men, grazed
+the wheels, the carriage, and the truck of the gun; but
+
+          He, watching over Israel, slumbers not nor sleeps.
+
+Nothing short of angel-wings could have kept our fellows safe. The men knew
+their deadly peril, knew that the tip of the wand in the Death Angel's hand
+was brushing their cheeks. One could see that they knew their peril. The
+hard, firm grip of the jaw, the steady light in the hard-set eyes, the
+manly pallor on the cheeks, all told of knowledge; yet not once did they
+lose their heads. Each fellow stood there as bravely as human flesh and
+blood could stand, and faced the iron hail with unblenching courage and
+intrepid coolness. Had those khaki-clothed warriors been carved out of
+bronze and moved by machinery, they could not have shown less fear or more
+perfect discipline. The pom-pom is a gun which I have been told the British
+War Office refused as a toy some two years back. I have had the doubtful
+pleasure of being under its fire to-day, and all I can say is that I would
+gladly have given my place to any gentleman in the War Office who happens
+to hold the notion that the pom-pom is a toy.
+
+Somehow the enemy got hold of the position where General Rundle and staff
+were located, and all the afternoon they swept the plain in front of the
+tents, the hills above, and the hill opposite with shells; but they could
+not quite drop one in the little ravine itself. Half an hour before sundown
+I had to ride with two other correspondents to headquarters to get a
+dispatch away. We got across safely, but had not been there five minutes
+before a grandly directed shell sent the General and his staff off the brow
+of the hill in double quick time. We delivered our dispatches, and were
+getting ready for a gallop over the quarter mile of veldt, when, _pom,
+pom, pom, pom_, came a dozen one-pounders a few yards away right across
+our track. It made our hearts sit very close to our ribs, but there was
+nothing for it but to take our horses by the head, drive the spurs home,
+and ride as if we were rounding up wild cattle. I want it to stand on
+record that I was not the last man across that strip of veldt. There was
+not much incident in the day's fighting; there seldom is in an artillery
+duel, carried on by men who know the game, in hilly country. Once during
+the afternoon the big gun belonging to the Boers became so troublesome that
+half a dozen of ours were trained upon it, and for best part of an hour it
+sounded as if a section of Sheol had visited the earth, so deadly was the
+fire, so fierce the bursting missiles, that not a rock wallaby, crouching
+in its hole, could have lived twenty minutes in the location. We heard no
+more from that gun.
+
+As I rode from position to position our fellows greeted me with the cry:
+"Any news, sir? Heard if we are going to have a go at 'em with the spoons
+(bayonets)?" One midget, a bugler kiddie, so small that an ordinary
+maid-of-all-work could comfortably lay him across her knee and spank him,
+yawned as he knelt in the grass, and desired to know when "we was goin' ter
+'ave some real bloomin' fightin'. 'E was tired of them bloomin' guns, 'e
+was; they made his carmine 'ead ache with their blanky noise. 'E didn't
+call that fightin'; 'e called it an adjective waste of good hammunition. 'E
+liked gettin' up to 'is man, fair 'nd square, 'nd knockin' 'ell out of
+'im." He meant it, too, the little beggar, and I could not help laughing at
+him when I considered that lots of the old fighting Boers I had seen could
+have dropped the midget into their lunch bags, and not have noticed his
+weight.
+
+The Yeomanry did a lot of useful work, and are as eager for fight as a bull
+ant on a hot plate. They are as good as any men I have seen in Africa, full
+of ginger, good horsemen, wear-and-tear, cut-and-come-again sort of men.
+They adapt themselves to circumstances readily, are jolly and good-humoured
+under trying circumstances. Their officers are, as a rule, first-class
+soldiers, equal to any emergency. On Tuesday the Boers kept their guns
+going at a great rate, and we really thought that they had made up their
+minds to see the thing right out at all costs. Personally I did not for a
+moment think that they were ignorant of General French's rapid advance. I
+do not believe it possible for any large body of hostile troops to move in
+South Africa without the Boers being thoroughly cognisant of every detail
+connected with the move, partly because they are the most perfect scouts in
+the world, and partly because the scattered population on every hand is
+positively favourable to them. Our artillery dropped a storm of shells
+during the day, and that night it was whispered in camp that there was to
+be a general attack next morning. On Tuesday evening General French
+advanced right on to the Boer rear, and some smart fighting took place, the
+enemy suffering considerably, though our losses were small.
+
+At dawn on Wednesday we moved forward rapidly, and in a few hours' time our
+infantry were standing in the trenches and upon the hills that the Boers
+had occupied the day before. Our mounted men rode at a gallop through the
+gullies, but nothing was to be seen of the foe except a few newly dug
+graves. The Boers had vanished like a dream, taking all their guns with
+them. Louis Botha, the commander-in-chief, had come in person to them, and
+the retreat was carried out under his eyes. We followed to Dewetsdorp, and
+from there on to Thaba Nchu (pronounced Tabancha).
+
+On Friday night the enemy exchanged a few shots with us from the heights
+beyond, but no harm was done on either side. The Third Division, to which I
+had attached myself, under General Chermside, has been ordered towards
+Bloemfontein. French is in command, and, judging by his past performances,
+I fully expect we shall have some busy times, though French may go away and
+leave the Eighth Division under General Rundle.
+
+
+
+
+
+                     WITH RUNDLE IN THE FREE STATE.
+
+                                                         ORANGE FREE STATE.
+
+
+Since the Boers bolted from Constantia Farm we have done but little beyond
+following them from spot to spot through the Free State, in the conquered
+territory along the Basuto border. At Constantia Farm they gave us a
+gunnery duel, which, though incessant and continuous, did little real
+damage to either side. After that, when General French joined issue with
+us, the Boers shifted their ground with consummate skill. We moved on to
+Dewetsdorp, and there the Third Division, under Chermside, parted company
+with us. We moved onward to Thaba Nchu, Brabant keeping well away towards
+the Basuto border with his flying column. At Thaba Nchu it looked day by
+day as if we were in for something hot and hard, the Boers having, as
+usual, taken up a position of vast natural strength. But Hamilton was the
+only one to get to close quarters with the veldt warriors, when executing a
+flanking movement. I have since learned that the enemy suffered very
+severely on that occasion.
+
+They can give some of the British journalists a wholesome lesson in regard
+to manliness of spirit, these same rough fellows, bred in the African
+wilds. Speaking to me of the charge the Gordons made, when led by Captain
+Towse, they were unstinted in their praises. "It was grand, it was
+terrible," they said, "to see that little handful of men rush on fearless
+of death, fearless of everything." It was bravery of the highest kind, and
+they admired it, as only brave men do admire courage in a foeman. The
+people of Britain who read extracts taken from Boer newspapers, extracts
+which ridicule British pluck and all things British, must not blame the
+Boers for those statements. In nearly every case the papers published
+inside Burgher territory are edited by renegade Britons, and it is these
+renegades, not the fighting Boers, who defame our nation, and take every
+possible opportunity of hitting below the belt.
+
+When we left Thaba Nchu, General French left us, as did also Hamilton and
+Smith-Dorien. Brabant hugged the Basuto border, and swept the land clean of
+everything hostile. General Rundle (the flower of courtesy and chivalry)
+kept the centre; General Boyes looked after our left wing; General Campbell
+picked up the intermediate spaces as occasion demanded; and so we moved on,
+trying, but trying in vain, to draw a cordon round the ever-shifting foe.
+There was no chance for a dashing forward move; the country through which
+we passed was lined by kopjes, which were simply appalling in their native
+strength. What prompted the Boer leaders to fall back from them, step by
+step, will for ever remain a mystery to me. It was not want of provisions,
+for we knew that they had huge supplies of beef and mutton, whilst there
+were in their possession almost inexhaustible stores of grain. It was not
+want of fodder for their horses, for the valleys and veldt were covered
+with beautiful grass, almost knee-deep. Water was plentiful in all
+directions, and they apparently possessed plenty of ammunition. Prisoners
+assert that Commandant Olivier was absolutely furious when compelled to
+fall back, by order of his superiors. It is also asserted that he is now in
+dire disgrace on account of his refusal to obey promptly some of his
+superior's commands. It is further stated that he is to be deposed from his
+command, and will cease to be a factor of any importance in the war. It is
+hard to fathom Boer tactics. It does not follow because a line of kopjes
+are abandoned to-day that the burghers have retreated; they fall back
+before scouting parties; their pickets watch our scouts return to camp,
+knowing that they will convey the news to headquarters that the kopjes are
+empty of armed men. Then, with almost incredible swiftness, the light-armed
+Boers swarm back by passes known only to themselves, and secretly and
+silently take up positions where they can butcher an advancing army. If
+General Rundle had been a rash, impetuous, or a headstrong man, he could
+comfortably have lost his whole force on half a dozen occasions; but he is
+not. He is essentially a cautious leader, and pits his brain against that
+of the Boer leaders as a good chess player pits his against an opponent. He
+may believe in the luck of the British Army, but he trusts mighty little to
+it. Better lose a couple of days than a couple of regiments is his motto,
+and a wise motto it is. Had he flung his men haphazard at any of the
+positions where the Boers have made a stand, he would have been cut to
+pieces.
+
+Rundle plays a wise game. When the enemy looks like sitting tight, Rundle
+at once commences a series of manoeuvres directed from his centre. This
+keeps the enemy busy, and gives them a lot of solid thinking to do, and
+whilst they are thinking he moves his flanks forward, overlapping them in
+the hope of surrounding them. The Boer hates to have his rear threatened,
+and invariably falls away. His method of falling back is unique. As soon as
+he smells danger, all the live stock is sent off and all the waggons. Cape
+carts are kept handy for baggage that cannot be sent with the heavy convoy.
+Most of the big guns go with the first flight; one or two, which can easily
+be shifted, are kept to hold back our advance, and the deadly little
+pom-poms are dodged about from kopje to kopje. The pom-pom is not much to
+look at, but it is a weapon to be reckoned with in mountain warfare. It
+throws only a one-pound shell, and throws it from the most impossible
+places imaginable. The beauty of the pom-pom is that it drops its work in
+from spots from which no sane man ever expects a shell to come.
+
+When the Boer finds that his position is untenable on account of a flanking
+move, the horses are hitched up to the light Cape carts, the loading is
+packed, and off they fly at a gallop, and the guns follow suit; whilst the
+rifles hold the heights. That is why we so seldom get hold of anything
+worth having when we do take a position. Our losses have been paltry,
+because the Boer is a defensive, not an offensive, fighter. He waits to be
+attacked, he does not often attack; and our general is a man who does not
+throw men's lives away. He believes in brains before bayonets, and England
+may be thankful for the possession of General Rundle. Had he been a madcap
+general, there would have been a few thousand more widows in the old
+country to-day than there are. At the same time, he is a man of immense
+personality. Should he ever get a chance to engage the enemy in a pitched
+battle, he will prove to the world that he is capable of great things.
+There will be no half-hearted work in such an hour. If he has to sacrifice
+men on the altar of war, he will surely sacrifice them, but not until he is
+compelled to do so. Brabant is a wild daredevil, who rushes on like a
+mountain torrent Boyes is brainy; careful, and yet dashing.
+
+I want to state here that I have never lost a single opportunity, whilst
+travelling through the enemy's country, of looking at the "home" life of
+the people--and I may say that I have been in a few back-country homes in
+America, in Australia, and in other parts of the world--and I want to place
+it on record that in my opinion the Boer farmer is as clean in his home
+life, as loving in his domestic arrangements, as pure in his morals, as any
+class of people I have ever met. Filth may abound, but I have seen nothing
+of it. Immorality may be the common everyday occurrence I have seen it
+depicted in some British journals, but I have failed to find trace of it.
+Ignorance as black as the inside of a dog may be the prevailing state of
+affairs; if so, I have been one of the lucky few who have found just the
+reverse in whichsoever direction I have turned. After six months', or
+nearly six months', close and careful observation of their habits, I have
+arrived at the conclusion that the Boer farmer, and his son and daughter,
+will compare very favourably with the farming folk of Australia, America,
+and Great Britain. What he may be in the Transvaal I know not, because I
+have not yet been there; but in Cape Colony and in the Free State he is
+much as I have depicted him, no better, no worse, than Americans and
+Australians, and as good a fighting man as either--which is tantamount to
+saying that he is as good as anything on God's green earth, if he only had
+military training.
+
+Ask "Tommy" privately, when he comes home, if this is not so--not "Thomas,"
+who has been on lines of communication all the time--but "Tommy," who has
+fought him, and measured heart and hand with him. I think he will tell you
+much as I have told you. For "Tommy" is no fool; he is not half such a
+braggart, either, as some of the Jingoes, who shout and yell, but never
+take a hand in the real fighting; those wastrels of England, who are at
+home with a pewter of beer in their hands--hands that never did, and never
+will, grip a rifle.
+
+Whilst at Trummel I took advantage of a couple of days' camping to go out
+three miles from camp to have a look at a diamond mine. I found a
+red-whiskered Dutchman in charge, who knew less English than I knew Dutch,
+and as my Dutch consists of about twelve words we did not do much in the
+conversational line; but I made him understand by pantomimic telegraphy
+that I wanted to have a look round, to size up things. He took me to a
+"dump," where the ore at grass was stored, and converted himself into a
+human stone-cracking machine for my benefit, until I had seen all that I
+wanted to see in regard to the "ore at grass." He was very much like mine
+managers the world over--very ready to play tricks on anyone he considered
+"green" at the business. It was not his fault that he did not know that I
+had been a reporter on gold, silver, copper, lead, tin, and coal mines for
+about twenty years.
+
+Thinking, doubtless, that I was like unto the ordinary city fellow who
+comes at rare intervals to look at a mine, he made me a present of a piece
+of rock with some worthless garnets in it, also a sample of country rock
+pregnant with mundic; the garnets and the mundic glittered in the sunshine.
+I rose to the bait, as I was expected to do, and intimated that I would
+like a lot of it. This delighted the Dutchman, and he beamed all over his
+expansive face, all the time cursing me for the second son of an idiot, as
+is the way with mine managers. But he stopped grinning before the afternoon
+wore out, for I set him climbing and clambering for little pieces of mundic
+and tiny patches of garnets in all the toughest places I could find in that
+mine, and went into ecstasies over each individual piece, until I had quite
+a load of the rubbish. Then I intimated gently that I would be back that
+way when the war was over, and would surely send my Cape cart for them if
+he would be good enough to mind them for me. I fancy an inkling of the
+truth dawned in that Dutchman's soul at last, for he made no further
+reference to either garnets or mundic. I satisfied myself with a sample of
+the matrix in which diamonds are found, and also with a specimen of the
+country rock for geological reference, but the garnets are on the heap
+still.
+
+The mine, which is named the "Monastery," is very crudely worked;
+everything connected with it is primitive. A huge quarry, about 600 feet in
+circumference, and about 40 feet deep, had been opened up. There was
+nothing in it in the shape of lode or reef, but a large number of
+disconnected "stringers," or leaders of rocky matter, in which diamonds are
+often found. At the bottom of the quarry the water lay fully eight feet
+deep, owing to the fact that the mine had lain unworked during the war. A
+vertical shaft had been sunk a little distance from the quarry to a depth
+of 150 feet, but there was a hundred feet of water in it, so that I am
+unable to say anything concerning the Monastery diamond mine at its lower
+levels. One or two tunnels had been drawn from the quarry into the
+adjoining country on small leaders, and from what I could gather from my
+guide diamonds had been discovered. Whilst I went below, I left my Kaffir
+boy on top to pick up what he could in the shape of rumour or gossip from
+the natives, and he informed me that the niggers had been the cause of the
+opening of the mine, they having found diamonds near the surface in some of
+the leaders, which consisted of a rock known in Australian mining circles
+as illegitimate granite. The white folk, fearing that the poor heathen
+might become debauched if they possessed too much wealth, had gathered
+those diamonds in--when they could--and later had started mining for the
+precious gems, with what success the heathen did not know. I tried the
+Dutchman on the same point, but I might as well have interviewed an oyster
+in regard to the science of gastronomy. He dodged around my question like a
+fox terrier round a fence, until I gave him up in despair. But, for all
+that, I rather fancy they have found diamonds round that way, only they
+don't want the British to know anything about it.
+
+
+
+
+
+                             RED WAR WITH RUNDLE.
+
+                                                              NEAR SENEKAL.
+
+
+In our rear lies the little village of Senekal, a shy little place,
+seemingly too modest to lift itself out of the miniature basin caused by
+the circumambient hills. Khaki-clad figures, gaunt, hungry, and dirty,
+patrol the streets; the few stores are almost denuded of things saleable,
+for friend and foe have swept through the place again and again, and both
+Boer and Briton have paid the shops a visit. At the hotel I managed to get
+a dinner of bread and dripping, washed down with a cup of coffee, guiltless
+of both milk and sugar. But, if the bill of fare was meagre, the bill of
+costs made up for it in its wealth of luxuriousness. If I rose from the
+table almost as hollow as when I sat down, I only had to look at the
+landlord's charges to fancy I had dined like one of the blood royal.
+Opposite the hotel stands the church, a dainty piece of architecture, fit
+for a more pretentious town than Senekal. It is fashioned out of white
+stone, and stands in its own grounds, looking calm and peaceful amidst all
+the bustle and blaze of war. Someone has turned all the seats out of the
+sacred edifice, preparatory to converting it into a hospital. The seats are
+not destroyed; they are not damaged; they are stacked away under a
+neighbouring verandah.
+
+I do not think it wrong so to utilise a church. It is the only place fit to
+put the wounded men in in all the town. The great Nazarene in whose name
+the church was erected would not have allowed the sick to wither by the
+wayside in the days when the Judean hills rang to the echo of His magnetic
+voice, nor do I think it wrongful to His memory to convert His shrine into
+an abiding place for the sick and suffering.
+
+Far away on our left flank the enemy hold the heights, and watch us moving
+outward, whilst between them and us, stretching mile after mile in a line
+with our column, ripples a line of scarlet flame, for the foe has fired the
+veldt to starve the transit mules, horses, and oxen. Like a sword
+unsheathed in the sunlight, the flames sparkle amidst the grass, which
+grows knee-deep right to the kopje's very lips. Birds rise on the wing with
+harsh, resonant cries, flutter awhile above their ravished homes, then
+wheel in mid-air and seek more peaceful pastures. Hares spring up before
+the crackling flames quite reach their forms, and, like grey streaks in a
+sailor's beard on a stormy day, flash suddenly into view, and as suddenly
+disappear again. Here and there a graceful springbok dashes through the
+smoke, with head thrown back and graceful limbs extended, his glossy,
+mottled hide looking doubly beautiful backed by that red streak of fire.
+The wind catches the quivering crimson streak, and for awhile the flames
+race, as I have seen wild horses, neck to neck, rush through the saltbush
+plains at the sound of the stockman's whip. Then, as the wind drops, the
+flames curl caressingly around the wealth of growing fodder, biting the
+grass low down, and wrapping it in a mantle of black and red, as flame and
+smoke commingle.
+
+Here and there a pool of water, hidden from view until the fire fiend
+stripped the veldt land bare, leaps to life like a silver shield in the
+grim setting of the bare and blackened plain. Small mobs of cattle stand
+stupidly snuffing the smoke-laden air, until the breath of the blaze
+awakens them to a sense of peril; then, with horns lowered like bayonets at
+the charge, with tails stiff and straight behind them as levelled lances,
+they leap onward, over or through everything in front of them, bellowing
+frantically their brute beast protest against the red ruin of war. The
+flames roll on; they reach the stone walls of a cattle pen, and leap it as
+a hunter takes a brush fence in his stride; onward still, until a Kaffir
+kraal is reached. The soft-lipped billows kiss the uncouth mud wall, and
+for a moment transfigure them with a nameless beauty, the beauty that
+precedes ruin. Only a moment or two, and then the resistless destroyer
+flaunts its pennons amidst the reed-thatched roofs; the sparks leap up, the
+black smoke curls towards the sky, whilst on the neighbouring hills the
+negro women, with their babes in their arms, wail woefully, for those rude
+huts, with all their barbarous trappings, meant home--aye, home and
+happiness--to them. The flames roll onward now in two long lines, for the
+Kaffir encampment had sundered them, and now they look, with their
+beautifully rounded curves sweeping so gracefully out into the unknown,
+like the rich, ripe lips of a wanton woman in the pride of her shameless
+beauty. All that they leave behind is desolation, darkness, despair, ruin
+unutterable, only blackened walls, simmering carcases, weeping women, and
+wailing children.
+
+Away on our right flank we can just make out the skeletons of what a few
+hours before had been a cluster of smiling farmhouses. They do not smile
+now; they grin horribly in the sunlight, grin as the fleshless skulls of
+dead men grin on a battlefield after those sextons of the veldt the
+grey-hooded, curved-beaked vultures have screamed their final farewell to
+the charnel-houses of war--noble war, splendid war, pastime of potentates
+and princes, invented in hell and patented in all the temples of sorrow.
+
+As we look on those grim relics of this dreary time we catch the maddening
+sound of distant guns. The chargers prick their ears, and quiver from
+muzzle to coronet. The khaki-clad figures on the plain throw up their heads
+and turn their eyes towards the sound; the tired shoulders square
+themselves, each foot seems to tread the blackened plain with firmer,
+prouder tread. The sound of guns is like the rush of wine through sluggish
+veins, and men forget that they are faint with hunger, weary to the verge
+of wretchedness with ceaseless marching. The sound of guns bespeaks the
+presence of the foe, and those gaunt soldiers of the Queen are galvanised
+to life and lust of battle by the very breath of war. A ripple runs along
+the line, the farthest flanks catch the gleam of the sun on distant rifle
+barrels. An order rings out sharp and crisp; the column stands as if each
+man and horse were carved in rock.
+
+The infantry lean lightly on their guns, the cavalry crane forward in their
+saddles. We pause and wait until we see the green badge of O'Driscoll's
+scouts on the hats of the advancing riders. O'Driscoll rides towards the
+staff with loosened rein, and every spur in all his gallant little troop
+shows how the scouts had ridden. We strain our ears to catch the news the
+Irish scout has brought. It comes at last Clements has met the foe, and
+death is busy in those distant hills.
+
+Rundle sits silently, hard pressed in his saddle--a gallant figure, with
+soldier and leader written all over him. We wait his verdict anxiously, for
+on his word our fate may hinge. We have not long to wait--Clements can hold
+his own; Brabant will outflank the Boers. Forward, march! The men droop as
+wheat fields droop in the sultry air of a seething day. They are tired,
+deadly tired; not too tired to fight, but weary of the endless marching
+from point to point to keep the enemy from breaking through their lines and
+striking southward.
+
+Away in front of us we note the snow-crowned hills which girdle Basutoland,
+snow crowned and sun kissed; every hilltop sparkling like a giant gem, and
+over all a pale blue sky, curtained by flimsy clouds of gauzy whiteness,
+through which the sun laughs rosily, the handiwork of the Eternal. And
+underfoot only the deep dead blackness of the blistered veldt, ravished of
+its wondrous wealth of living green, the rude, rough footprint of the god
+of war--sweet war; kind, Christian war!
+
+Now, overhead, betwixt the smoking earth and smiling sky, flocks of
+vultures come and go, fluttering their great pinions noiselessly. To them
+the sound of guns is merriest music; it is their summons to the banquet
+board. Foul things they look as the float over us, silent as souls that
+have slipped from some ash heap in Hades, grey with the greyness that grows
+on the wolf's hide; their feathers hang upon them in ridges, unkempt,
+unlovely, soiled with blood and offal. They float above our heads, they
+wheel upon our flanks.
+
+A horse drops wearily upon its knees, looks round dumbly on the wilderness
+of blackness, then turns its piteous eyes upward towards the skies that
+seem so full of laughing loveliness; then, with a sob which is almost human
+in the intensity of its pathos, the tired head falls downwards, the limbs
+contract with spasmodic pain, then stiffen into rigidity; and one wonders,
+if the Eternal mocked that silent appeal from those great sad eyes, eyes
+that had neither part nor lot in the sin and sorrow of war, how shall a man
+dare look upwards for help when the bitterness of death draws nigh unto
+him? The grey lines above, on flank, and front, and rear, were with greedy
+speed converging to one point, until they flock in a horrid, struggling,
+fighting, revolting mass of beaks and feathers above the fallen steed, as
+devils flock around the deathbed of a defaulting deacon. A soldier on the
+outer edge of the extended line swings his rifle with swift, backhanded
+motion over his shoulder, and brings the butt amidst the crowd of carrion.
+The vultures hop with grotesque, ungainly motions from their prey, and
+stand with wings extended and clawed feet apart, their necks outstretched
+and curved heads dripping slime and blood, a fitting setting amidst the
+black ruin of war. The charger now looks upward from eyeless sockets; his
+gutted carcass, flattened into a shapeless streak, shrinks towards the
+earth, as if asking to be veiled from the laughter of the skies. But there
+is neither pity from above nor shelter from below as the red wave of war,
+like the curse of the white Christ, sweeps over the land. God grant that
+merry England may never witness, on her own green meadow lands, these
+sights and sounds which meet the eye and ear on African soil.
+
+Oh, England, England, if I had a voice whose clarion tones could reach your
+ears and stir your hearts in every city and town, village and hamlet,
+wayside cot and stately castle, in all your sea-encircled isle, I would cry
+to you to guard your coasts! Better, it seems to me, writing here, with all
+the evidences of war beneath my eyes, that every man born of woman's love
+on British soil should die between the decks, or find a grave in foundering
+ships of war, than that the foot of a foreign foe should touch the
+Motherland. Better that your ships be shambles, where men could die like
+men, sending Nelson's royal message all along the armoured line; better
+that our best and bravest found a grave where grey waves curl towards our
+coastline, than that our womanhood should look with woe-encircled eyes into
+the wolfish mouth of war. Better that our strong men perished, with the
+brine and ocean breezes playing freshly on the gaping wounds through which
+their souls passed outward, than that our little maids and tiny, tender
+babes should face the unutterable shame, the anguish, and the suffering of
+a war within our borders.
+
+Do not laugh the very thought to scorn and brand the thing impossible, for
+fools have laughed before to-day whilst kingdoms tottered to their fall You
+who stay at home miss much that others know--and, knowing, dread. If
+England at this hour could only realise what manner of men control her
+destinies, then all the lion in the breed would spring to life again. I do
+not know if lack-brains of a similar strain control the supplies for
+England's Navy; but if, in time of war, it proves to be the case, then God
+help us, God help the old flag and the stout hearts who fight for it.
+
+Lend me your ears, and let me tell you how our army in Africa is treated by
+the incompetent people in the good city of London. I pledge my word, as a
+man and a journalist, that every written word is true. I will add nothing,
+nor detract from, nor set down aught in malice. If my statements are proven
+false, then let me be scourged with the tongue and pen of scorn from every
+decent Briton's home and hearth for ever after, for he who lies about his
+country at such an hour as this is of all traitors the vilest. I will deal
+now particularly with the men who are acting under the command of
+Lieutenant-General Sir Leslie Rundle. This good soldier and courteous
+gentleman has to hold a frontage line from Winburg, _viâ_ Senekal,
+almost to the borders of Basutoland. His whole front, extending nearly a
+hundred miles, is constantly threatened by an active, dashing, determined
+enemy, an enemy who knows the country far better than an English
+fox-hunting squire knows the ground he hunts over season after season. To
+hold this vast line intact General Rundle has to march from point to point
+as his scouts warn him of the movements of the tireless foe. He has
+stationed portions of his forces at given points along this line, and his
+personal work is to march rapidly with small bodies of infantry, yeomanry,
+scouts, and artillery towards places immediately threatened. He has to keep
+the Boers from penetrating that long and flexible line, for if once they
+forced a passage in large numbers they would sweep like a torrent
+southwards, envelop his rear, cut the railway and telegraph to pieces, stop
+all convoys, paralyse the movements of all troops up beyond Kroonstad, and
+once more raise the whole of the Free State, and very possibly a great
+portion of the Cape Colony as well.
+
+General Rundle's task is a colossal one, and any sane man would think that
+gigantic efforts would be made to keep him amply supplied with food for his
+soldiers. But such is not the case. The men are absolutely starving. Many
+of the infantrymen are so weak that they can barely stagger along under the
+weight of their soldierly equipment. They are worn to shadows, and move
+with weary, listless footsteps on the march. People high up in authority
+may deny this, but he who denies it sullies the truth. This is what the
+soldiers get to eat, what they have been getting to eat for a long time
+past, and what they are likely to get for a long time to come, unless
+England rouses herself, and bites to the bone in regard to the people who
+are responsible for it.
+
+One pound of raw flour, which the soldiers have to cook after a hard day's
+march, is served out to each man every alternate day. The following day he
+gets one pound of biscuits. In this country there is no fuel excepting a
+little ox-dung, dried by the sun. If a soldier is lucky enough to pick up a
+little, he can go to the nearest water, of which there is plenty, mix his
+cake without yeast or baking-powder, and make some sort of a wretched
+mouthful. He gets one pound of raw fresh meat daily, which nine times out
+of ten he cannot cook, and there his supplies end.
+
+What has become of the rations of rum, of sugar, of tea, of cocoa, of
+groceries generally? Ask at the snug little railway sidings where the goods
+are stacked--and forgotten. Ask in the big stores in Capetown and other
+seaport towns. Ask in your own country, where countless thousands of
+pounds' worth of foodstuffs lie rotting in the warehouses, bound up and
+tied down with red tape bandages. Ask--yes, ask; but don't stop at
+asking--damn somebody high up in power. Don't let some wretched underling
+be made the scapegoat of this criminal state of affairs, for the taint of
+this shameful thing rests upon you, upon every Briton whose homes,
+privileges, and prosperity are being safeguarded by these famishing men.
+The folk in authority will probably tell you that General Rundle and his
+splendid fellows are so isolated that food cannot be obtained for them. I
+say that is false, for recently I, in company with another correspondent,
+left General Rundle's camp without an escort. We made our way in the
+saddle, taking our two Cape carts with us, to Winburg railway station;
+leaving our horseflesh there, we took train for East London. Then back to
+the junction, and trained it down to Capetown, where we remained for
+forty-eight hours, and then made our way back to Winburg, and from Winburg
+we came without escort to rejoin General Rundle at Hammonia. If two
+innocent, incompetent (?) war correspondents could traverse that country
+and get through with winter supplies for themselves, why cannot the
+transport people manage to do the same? These transport people affect to
+look with contempt upon a war correspondent and his opinions on things
+military; but if we could not manage transport business better than they
+do, most of us would willingly stand up and allow ourselves to be shot. We
+are no burden upon the Army; we carry for ourselves, we buy for ourselves,
+and we look for news for ourselves; and we take our fair share of risks in
+the doing of our duty, as the long list of dead and disabled journalists
+will amply prove.
+
+It is not, in my estimation, the whole duty of a war correspondent to go
+around the earth making friends for himself, or looking after his personal
+comfort, or booming himself for a seat in Parliament on a cheap patriotic
+ticket. It is rather his duty to give praise where praise is due, censure
+where censure has been earned, regardless of consequences to himself. Such
+was the motto of England's two greatest correspondents--Forbes and
+Steevens--both of whom have passed into the shadowland, and I would to God
+that either of them were here to-day, for England knew them well, and they
+would have roused your indignation as I, an unknown man, dare not hope to
+do. But though what I have written does not bear the magical name of
+Steevens or of Forbes, it bears the hallmark of the eternal truth. Our men
+on the fields of war are famishing whilst millions worth of food lies
+rotting on our wharves and in our cities, food that ought with ordinary
+management to be within easy reach of our fighting generals. Britain asks
+of Rundle the fulfilment of a task that would tax the energies and
+abilities of the first general in Europe; and with a stout heart he faces
+the work in front of him, faces it with men whose knees knock under them
+when they march, with hands that shake when they shoulder their
+rifles--shake, but not with fear; tremble, but not from wounds, but from
+weakness, from poverty of blood and muscle, brought about by continual
+hunger. Are those men fit to storm a kopje? Are they fit to tramp the whole
+night through to make a forced march to turn a position, and then fight as
+their fathers fought next day?
+
+I tell you no. And yours be the shame if the Empire's flag be lowered--not
+theirs, but yours; for you--what do you do? You stand in your music-halls
+and shout the chorus of songs full of pride for your soldier, full of
+praise for his patience, his pluck, and his devotion to duty; and you let
+him go hungry, so hungry that I have often seen him quarrel with a nigger
+for a handful of raw mealies on the march. It is so cheap to sing,
+especially when your bellies are full of good eating; it costs nothing to
+open your mouths and bawl praises. It is pleasant to swagger and brag of
+"your fellows at the front;" but why don't you see that they are fed, if
+you want them to fight? Give "Tommy" a lot less music and flapdoodle, and a
+lot more food of good quality, and he'll think a heap more of you. It is
+nice of you to stay in Britain and drink "Tommy's" health, but there would
+be far more sense in the whole outfit if you would allow him to "eat his
+own" out here.
+
+
+
+
+
+                       THE FREE STATERS' LAST STAND.
+
+                                                                SLAP KRANZ.
+
+
+At last the blow has fallen which has shattered the Boer cause in the Free
+State. There will be skirmishes with scattered bands in the mountain gorges
+beyond Harrismith, but the backbone of the Republic has been broken beyond
+redemption. Sunday, the 30th of July, was big with fate, though we who sat
+almost within the shadow of the snow enshrouded hills of savage Basutoland
+at the dawning of that day knew it not. It was a joyful day for us, though
+pregnant with sorrow for the veldtsmen who had fought so long and well for
+their doomed cause, for on that day our generals reaped the harvest which
+they had sown with infinite patience and undaunted courage. General Hunter,
+to whom the chief command had just been given, was there, surrounded by his
+staff, a soldierly figure worthy of a nation's trust; Clements, keen faced,
+sharp voiced, with alertness written in each lineament; Paget, whose fiery
+spirit spoke from his mobile face, his blood, hot as an Afghan sun,
+flashing the workings of his mind into his face as sunlight flashes from
+steel; and Rundle, hawk-eyed and stern, no friend to Pressmen, but a
+soldier every inch, one of those men whose hands build empires. Had he been
+stripped of modern gear that day, and placed in Roman trappings, one would
+have looked behind him to see if Cĉsar meant to grace the show; but Cĉsar
+was not there.
+
+One of the greatest soldiers since the world began was missing from our
+ranks, the hero Roberts, whose great intellect had planned the _coup_
+which his generals had carried to maturity. Yet, though Lord Roberts
+planned each general move, an immense amount of actual work was left to the
+generals. The country they had to pass through was rugged and inhospitable.
+The foe they had to fight was brave, resourceful, and well supplied with
+all munitions of war; a single mistake on the part of any one of them would
+have wrecked the magnificent plan of the Commander-in-Chief. But no
+mistakes were made; each general worked as if his soul's salvation depended
+upon his individual efforts. Where all are good, as a rule it is hard to
+make a distinction; but in this instance one man stands out above his
+fellows, and that man is General Sir Leslie Rundle, the commander of the
+Eighth Division. His task from the first was herculean. He had to hold a
+line fully one hundred miles in length; day after day, week after week, the
+enemy tried to break that line and pour their forces into the territory we
+had conquered. Had they succeeded, they would have shaken the whole of
+South Africa to its very centre. This task kept Sir Leslie Rundle busy
+night and day. Wherever he camped, spies dogged his footsteps; black men
+and white men constantly upon his track. His every move was rapidly
+reported to our ever-watchful enemies. But, quick as the enemy undoubtedly
+were in all their movements, General Rundle nullified their efforts by his
+rapidity. So terribly hard did he work his men that they nicknamed him
+"Rundle, the Tramp." How the men stood it I cannot understand. I know of no
+other men in all the world who would have gone on as they did, obeying
+orders without a murmur or a whimper. They were savage at times over the
+food they got, and small blame to them, but they never blamed their
+general. They knew that he gave them plenty of the class of food that he
+could lay hands upon. Had the general's supplies been in this part of the
+country, instead of being tied up in red-tape packages on the railway line,
+General Rundle would have kept his Division fully supplied. The only food
+which he could command, beef and mutton, he gave without stint. Had the War
+Office authorities attended to their end of the work with the same
+commendable zeal, half the hardships of the campaign would have been
+averted.
+
+If ever war was reduced to an absolute science, it was upon this occasion.
+On the one hand, some six thousand Boers on the defensive, armed with the
+handiest quick-firing rifle known to modern times, with from eight to ten
+guns, well supplied with food and ammunition, and backed by some of the
+most awful country the eye of man ever rested upon--a country which they
+knew as a child knows its mother's face. On the other hand, an attacking
+force of 30,000 men and guns. To read the number of the opposing forces one
+would think the Boer task the effort of madmen, bent upon national
+extinction; but one glance at the country would upset those calculations
+entirely. Every kopje was a natural fortress, every sluit a perfect line of
+trenches, and every donga a nursery for death.
+
+To attempt to go into every move made by our troops during the months of
+May, June, and the early parts of July would only prove wearisome to the
+average reader; suffice it to say that finally we got the burgher forces
+into the Caledon Valley. This valley is about twenty-eight miles in length,
+and from fourteen to fifteen miles across its widest part. Properly
+speaking, it was not a valley at all, but a series of valleys interspersed
+by great kopjes, nearly all of which presented an almost impregnable
+appearance. The valley had a number of outlets, which the Boers fondly
+believed our people to be unacquainted with. These outlets were known as
+"neks," and were, without exception, terribly rough places for a hostile
+force to attack. Commando Nek was upon the south-east, facing towards
+Basutoland. This was merely a narrow pass, running up over a jagged kopje,
+with two greater kopjes on each side of it. The hills all round it were so
+placed that a number of good marksmen, hidden in the rocks, could easily
+sweep off thousands of an enemy who attempted to take it by storm. But that
+pass had to be taken before we could claim to hold the Free State in the
+hollow of our hand. Slabbert's Nek was merely a huge gash in the face of a
+cliff. It was the Boers' causeway towards the north, their highway to
+safety. Retief's Nek lay to the westward, and formed a grinning death trap
+for any general who might try the foolish hazard of a single-handed attack
+Naauwpoort Nek, ugly and uninviting, faced south-east towards Harrismith.
+Golden Gate, named by a satirist--or a satyr--was merely a narrow chasm
+worn by wind and weather through the girdle of mountains. It looked towards
+the east, and was a mere pathway, which none but desperate soldiers, driven
+to their last extremity, would think of using.
+
+The Boers never dreamed that it was possible for our troops to move with
+such machine-like precision as to hold every nek at our mercy. But whilst
+Rundle held the ground to the south, and kept the Boers for ever on the
+move by his restless activity, Clements and Paget moved on Slabbert's Nek,
+Hunter swept down on Retief's Nek, Naauwpoort Nek was invested by Hector
+Macdonald, Bruce Hamilton closed in upon Golden Gate, and the great net was
+almost perfect in its meshes. The enemy did not realise their danger until
+it was too late for the great bulk of their force to escape. Commandant De
+Wet saw the impending peril at the eleventh hour, and tried hard to get his
+countrymen to follow him in a dash through Slabbert's Nek; but very few of
+the burghers would believe that the sword of fate was hanging by so slim a
+thread over their heads. In vain this able soldier of the Republic
+harangued them. Vain all his threats and protestations. They could not and
+would not believe him. Sullenly they sat in their strongholds and watched
+Rundle--they could see him, and that danger which was present to their eyes
+was the only danger they would believe in; and day by day, hour by hour,
+the cordon of Britain's might drew closer and closer, until every link in
+the vast chain was practically flawless. Then Commandant De Wet gathered
+around him about 1,800 of his most devoted followers, and with Ex-President
+Steyn in their ranks they passed like ghosts of a fallen people through
+Slabbert's Nek on towards the Transvaal. How they managed to elude the
+incoming khaki wave some other pen must tell. It was a splendid piece of
+work on the Republican Commandant's part, and history will not begrudge him
+the full measure of praise due to him. Had General Prinsloo and his
+burghers been guided by him, these pages had never been written, for where
+De Wet took his 1,800 burghers he could as easily have taken 6,000.
+
+Scarcely had De Wet made his escape ere the truth was borne in upon the
+burghers with an iron hand that their doom was sealed. General Rundle's
+force, which all along had been essentially a blocking force, and not a
+striking force, made a move on the 23rd of July. All day the cannons spoke
+to the burghers from Willow Grange, all day long the rifles rippled their
+leaden waves of death. We could see but little of the enemy; they lay
+concealed behind the loose rocks, and our men had little else to do but
+lift their rifles and pull the trigger, trusting to the powers that rule
+the destinies of war to speed the bullets to some foeman's resting place.
+But we knew they were there if we could not see them, for the snap and
+snarl of the Mauser rifles came readily to our ears, and the booming of
+their guns answered ours, as hound answers hound when the scent grows
+hottest. We pounded them with shrapnel and pelted them with common shell
+until the air around them rained iron. Our guns were six to one, yet those
+brave veldtsmen held their own with a stubborn courage worthy of the
+noblest traditions in all the red pages of war. They gave us a parting shot
+at sundown, and at night, when the thick mists from the snow-draped
+mountains behind us came down upon the land and added to the darkness of
+the winter's night, they moved their gun and fell back with it to a place
+where they could renew the battle on the morrow. And at the dawning they
+testified their vitality by dropping a couple of shells right into the
+midst of the Imperial Yeomanry camp.
+
+Whilst we were busy at Julies Kraal, drawing the Boers' attention from
+other points, feinting as if we intended to push right on into Commando
+Nek, General Sir Archibald Hunter made a dash at Relief's Nek with his
+force, and our cannon were busy at almost every point around the valley
+where the Boers were stationed. General Prinsloo, who was in supreme
+command of the enemy's forces, had no means of knowing where the British
+really meant to strike. In vain he pushed men to anticipate Rundle's
+threatened move, vainly he turned like a trapped tiger towards Hunter's
+marching men. Turn where he would, the khaki wave met him, rolling
+resistlessly inward and onward. Hunter broke through with small loss, for
+the force which should have checked him at Retief's Nek was waiting at
+Commando Nek for Rundle and the Eighth Division. It was a master stroke,
+for when once Hunter was upon the inside of the valley he was in a position
+to threaten the rear of the Boer forces at Commando Nek, and that was a
+state of affairs which the enemy could not stand upon any terms. A number
+of them, under clever Commandant Olivier, slipped away through Golden Gate.
+They did not face the more open country even inside the big valley, but
+made their way through a piece of ground known as Witzies Hoek, and thence
+through a ravine which almost beggars description. Later on I went with
+Driscoll's Scouts in search of the tracks of these men, and followed along
+the same road they had taken. The ravine was a long, narrow gap between
+mountain ranges of immense height. The sides of the mountains were covered
+with loose boulders, sufficient to protect the whole Boer army from our
+artillery fire. The only track which a horseman could possibly follow wound
+in and out alongside the face of the cliffs, so narrow that even the horses
+bred in the country found it difficult to keep their feet upon it, and
+could only proceed, at funeral pace, in single file. A handful of men could
+have held that place against an army. With De Wet and Olivier gone, half
+our task was over. The Boers made a blind rush, first to one nek, then to
+the next, only to find that Britain's sons guarded them all. Small bodies
+of men might escape, but the vast supplies of mealies, waggons, guns, and
+all the cumbrous appliances of war, without which an army is useless, were
+penned in. The hand of the Field-Marshal was on them. The blocking forces
+held the neks, and now those forces which had to strike were ordered to
+move. No sooner did General Rundle receive his orders to advance than he
+rolled forward with the impetuosity of a storm breaking upon a southern
+coast. They on the spot knew that all the enemy's hopes lay centred round a
+town in the middle of the valley. This town was Fouriesburg. The general
+who could strike that town first would deal the death blow to the Boer
+forces in the Free State. Rundle was furthest from the town; the pathway
+his troops would have to pursue was rougher and more rugged than that which
+lay open to the rest of the forces.
+
+But Rundle knew his men; he knew their mettle; he had tried them with long,
+weary marching, and he knew that they were worthy of his trust. He gave his
+orders. The Leinsters and the Scots Guards, tall, gaunt, hunger-stricken
+warriors, whose ribs could be counted through their ragged khaki coats,
+swung out as cheerily as if they had never known the absence of a meal or
+the fatigue of a dreary march. The Irishmen chaffed the Scots, and the
+Scots yelled badinage back to the sons of Erin, and onward they went,
+onward and upward, over the rock-strewn ground, through the narrow passes,
+fixing their bayonets where the ground looked likely to hold a hidden foe,
+ready at a moment's notice to charge into the blackness that lay engulfed
+in those dreary passes. But the enemy did not wait for them. As the Eighth
+Division advanced, making the rocky headlands ring with the rhythm of their
+martial tread, the Boers fell back like driven deer, and the bugle spoke to
+the Scottish bagpipe until the silent hills gave tongue, and echo answered
+echo until the wearied ear sickened for silence. Onward we swept, until
+Commando Nek lay like a grinning gash in the face of nature far in our
+rear. When we did halt the men threw themselves down on the freezing earth,
+and wolfed a biscuit; then, stretching themselves face downwards on the
+grass, they slept with their rifles ready to their hands, their greatcoats
+around them, and above only the stars, that seemed to freeze in the
+boundless billows of eternal blue. Onward again, before the silver
+sentinels above us had faded before the blushing face of the dawning. With
+faces begrimed with dirt, with feet blistered by contact with flinty
+boulders, with tattered garments flapping around them like feathers on
+wounded waterfowl, officers and men faced the unknown, as their fathers
+faced it before them. Meanwhile Hunter was pressing towards Fouriesburg
+from Relief's Nek, his scouts--the well-known "Tigers," under Major
+Remington--well in advance of his main column.
+
+Rundle gave an order to Driscoll, Captain of the Scouts, who had done such
+good service to the Eighth Division. What passed between the general and
+the Irish captain no man knows, probably no man will ever know. But when
+Driscoll rode up at the mad gallop so characteristic of the man there was
+that in his hard, ugly, wind-tanned face which spoke of stern deeds to be
+done. He did not ride alone, this Irish-Indian Volunteer captain--Rundle's
+own _aide_, Lord Kensington, of the 15th Hussars, was on his right
+hand, and on his left Lieutenant Roger Tempest, of the Scots Guards, for a
+squad of the Scots Guards who had been learning scouting under Driscoll
+were to accompany Driscoll's Scouts. That little group was characteristic
+of the future of the British Empire. Two aristocrats riding shoulder to
+shoulder with a wild dare-devil, whose rifle had cracked over half the
+earth. England, Ireland, and Scotland rode alone in front of the
+adventurous band that day. It was a reckless ride; the captain, on his grey
+stallion, half a length in front. They darted through gullies, drew rein
+and unslung rifles up hill, now standing in the stirrups to ease their
+cattle, now sitting tight in the saddle to drive them over the open veldt,
+taking every chance that a dare-devil crew could take, pausing for nothing,
+staying for nothing. Right into the town of Fouriesburg they galloped, down
+from their saddles they leaped, up went the rifles; the foe poured in a few
+shots, and, appalled by the devilish audacity of the deed, fled before a
+handful. It was a proud moment then, when, in the last stronghold of the
+foe in all the Free State, Kensington, the _aide_ of the General of
+the Eighth Division, with a little band of officers grouped around him,
+with the Scouts and Scots Guards lying behind cover, rifle in hand, pulled
+down the Orange Free State flag in the very teeth of the foe. Only a little
+band of officers--Kensington, Driscoll, Davies, and Tempest. May their
+names be remembered when the wine cups flow!
+
+On the night of the 28th of July Colonel Harley, Chief Staff Officer Eighth
+Division, led two companies of the Leinsters and the full strength of the
+Scots Guards in a night attack on De Villier's Drift, which was to clear
+the way for the whole of the Eighth Division towards Fouriesburg. The
+movement had been well and carefully planned, and was neatly and
+expeditiously carried out. The following day we advanced in open order over
+the rolling veldt; now and again a man paused, lurched a little to one
+side, staggered and fell, as shot and shell dropped amongst us, but the
+march forward never ceased, never paused Paget and Hunter were with us now,
+and the lyddite guns seemed to drive all the fight out of the foe. They
+would not stand. Paget's artillerymen dashed forward, unlimbered, and
+loosed on the enemy with a recklessness of personal safety that was almost
+wanton.
+
+Every branch of the Service was vying with its neighbour to see who could
+take the most chances in the game of war, and the very recklessness of the
+men was their safeguard, for their dash whipped the foe, who now seemed to
+realise that their evil hour had at last dawned. They sent in a flag of
+truce, asking for the terms on which they might surrender.
+
+On the evening of the 29th July we knew that the enemy were negotiating for
+terms of peace, though things were kept as secret as possible until the
+following day. Then we saw General Prinsloo ride in with his _aide_
+and surrender. He met General Rundle first, and a few minutes later General
+Hunter, and the three leaders rode through the lines together. They were
+closeted closely for some hours before the final agreement could be arrived
+at. Prinsloo wanted terms for his men which the British generals would not
+concede, the final agreement being that the burghers were to ride in and
+throw down their arms under our flag. They were to be allowed a riding hack
+to convey them to the railway station, and each man was to remain in
+possession of his private effects. More than this General Hunter would not
+concede upon any terms. At one period of the negotiations things became so
+strained that hostilities were almost renewed, but the Hoof Commandant was
+wise enough to realise that destiny had decided against him and his burgher
+band. He came from the conclave at last, and gave an order in Dutch to his
+_aide_, and in a moment the horseman was flying towards the Boer
+laager with the news that, so far as they were concerned, the great war of
+1899 and 1900 was at an end.
+
+Our troops had been drawn up in long parallel lines, up over the slopes,
+over the crest, and along the edge of "Victory Hill." They formed a lane of
+blood and steel, down which the conquered veldtsmen had to march. Their
+guns were on their flanks, the generals grouped in the centre. Everything
+was hushed and still; there was no sign of braggart triumph, no unseemly
+mirth, no swagger in the demeanour of the troops. They had worked like men;
+they carried their laurels with conscious power and pride, but with no
+offensive show. It was a sight which few men ever behold, and none ever
+forget. The glory of the skies, where everything that met the eye was
+brightest blue, edged with stainless whiteness, was above us; and beneath
+our feet, and to right and left, were great valleys--not smiling like our
+English vales, where sunlight runs through shadows like laughter through
+tears, but vast uncultivated gaps that grinned in sardonic silence at
+conqueror and conquered, as though to remind us that we were but puppets in
+a passing show. Kopjes and valleys may have looked upon many a grim page in
+war's history. Savage chiefs, backed by savage hordes, have swept across
+them many a time and oft. Possibly, if the rocks had tongues, they could
+tell us much of ancient armies, for this land of Africa is old in blood and
+warlike doings. But few more remarkable sights than this upon which my eyes
+rested upon the 30th July, 1900, have ever graced even this land of many
+wonders.
+
+I looked along our lines, and saw our soldiers standing patiently waiting
+for the curtain to fall. I was proud of them, and of the men who led them,
+for they had won without one cruel stroke. No single human life had
+wantonly been wasted, no dishonourable deed had smirched their arms, no
+smoking ruins cried aloud to God for retribution, no outraged women sobbed
+dry-eyed behind us, no starving children fled before the khaki wave; and in
+this last hour, an hour pregnant with humiliation and pain to our enemies,
+there was the steady manliness which spoke of the great dignity of a great
+nation. Out from the stillness a bugle spoke from the lines of the
+Leinsters; the Scottish bagpipes, far away down the hillside, took up the
+note with a shrill scream of triumph, like the challenge of an eagle in its
+eyrie. A rustle ran along the lines. We caught the hum of many voices, then
+the tramp of horses' hoofs. A soldier slipped towards the spot where our
+country's flag was furled and ready; a moment later the Union Jack spread
+out and hugged the breezes. Our foemen rode towards the flag between the
+lines of those whose hands had placed it there, and when they came abreast
+of it they dropped their rifles and their bandoliers, and with bent heads
+passed onwards.
+
+Some were boys, so young that rifles looked unholy things in hands so
+childlike; others were old men, grey and grizzled, grim old tillers of the
+soil, who looked as hard as the rocky boulders against which they leant,
+many were in the pride of manhood; but old or young, grey beard or no
+beard, all of them seemed to realise that they were a beaten people. All
+day, and for many days, they came to us and laid their arms aside, until
+fully 4,000 men had owned themselves our prisoners. We gathered in the
+flocks and herds which had been held by them as army stores, and then we
+set to work to give the Free State peace and peaceful laws. Our next step
+was to march upon Harrismith, which was merely an armed promenade, for the
+real work of the campaign had been completed when, on Victory Hill, near
+Slap Kranz, Commandant Prinsloo surrendered with all his forces, excepting
+the few who fled with De Wet and Olivier. Our flag is the symbol of victory
+in every village and town. May it always be the symbol of even-handed
+justice, for no power in all the world, unless backed by wise and pure
+laws, will hold Africa for twenty years.
+
+I have never before attempted to express an opinion upon the future of
+Africa, yet now, when I have been nine months at the front, when I have
+marched through the Free State from border to border, noting carefully the
+demeanour of the people we have conquered, and the conduct of our troops
+towards those people, I may be allowed by the more tolerant of the British
+public to express an opinion. I do not see "white winged peace" brooding
+over this country. I see a people beaten, broken, out-generalled, and
+out-fought. I see a people who, even when whipped, maintain that the war
+has been an unholy war, brewed and bred by a few adventurers for sordid
+motives; and in my poor opinion there is little in front of us in South
+Africa but trouble and storm, unless someone with a cleaner soul than the
+ordinary politician remains in Africa to represent our nation. Only one man
+seems to me to stand out as fitted by God and nature with the high
+qualities which the ruler of Africa should possess. He is a man who has the
+gift of leadership as few men--ancient or modern--ever possessed it, a man
+whose word is known to be unbreakable, whose hands are clean, whose record
+is stainless--the Field-Marshal, Lord Roberts. The man who is to rule South
+Africa must be a great soldier, not a tyrant, not a martinet, not a bundle
+of red tape tied up with a Downing Street bow and adorned with frills. The
+negro trouble is looming large on the African borders, and the negro chiefs
+know that in Lord Roberts they have their master. We must not pander to
+them to the injury of the Dutch, or how are we to weld Dutch and British
+into a national whole? Our generals have so conducted this campaign,
+especially this latter part of it, that not only does the Dutchman know
+that we can fight, but he knows that we can be generous with the splendid
+generosity of a truly great people. Our generals, with few exceptions, have
+left that record behind them, for which a nation's thanks are due; and few
+have done more than the commander of the Eighth Division, Sir Leslie
+Rundle, who can say that not only did he never lose an English gun, but
+that never did the enemy of his country succeed in breaking through his
+lines. Few men, placed as he was, week after week, month after month, would
+have been able to make so proud a boast.
+
+These are possibly the last lines I shall ever write in connection with the
+Eighth Division. Their work is practically over here. My own is done, for
+my health is badly broken, and I shall follow this to England. But if I
+cannot march home with them, when they come back in triumph to receive from
+a grateful country the praise they have won, I can at least have the
+satisfaction of knowing that for many months I shared their vicissitudes,
+if not their glory.
+
+
+
+
+
+                      CHARACTER SKETCHES IN CAMP.
+
+                            THE CAMP LIAR.
+
+
+In the days of my almost forgotten boyhood I remember reading in the Book
+of all books that the Wise Man, in a fit of blank despair, declared that
+there were several things under heaven which he could neither gauge nor
+understand, viz., "The way of a serpent upon a rock, and the way of a man
+with a maid," and I beg leave to doubt if Solomon, in all his wisdom, could
+understand the little ways of a camp liar in his frisky glory. Whence he
+cometh, whither he goeth, and why he was born, are conundrums which might
+tax the ingenuity of all the prophets, from Daniel downwards, to solve. I
+have sought him with peace offerings in each hand, hoping to beguile him
+from his sinful ways, and have located him not. I have risen in the chilly
+dawn, and laid wait for him with a gun, but have not feasted mine eyes upon
+him. I have lain awake through the still watches of the night planning
+divers surprises for him, but success has not come nigh unto me. I have
+cursed the camp liar with a fervour born of long suffering, and I have
+hired a Zulu mule-driver to curse him for me; but my efforts have come to
+nought, and now I am sore in my very bones when I think of him. All men
+whose fate it is to dwell under canvas know of his work, but no man hath
+yet laid hand or eye upon him. A man goeth to his blankets at night time
+feeling good towards all mankind, satisfied in his own soul that he has
+garnered in all the legitimate news that he is in any way entitled to
+handle for the public benefit; and lo! when he ariseth in the dawning he
+finds that the camp liar has neither slept nor slumbered, for the very air
+is full of stories concerning battles which have not been fought and
+victories which have not been won. From mouth to mouth, all along the
+lines, the stories run as fire runs along fuse, and no man born of woman
+can tell whence they came or where they will stop. Each soldier questioned
+swears the tale is true, because "'twas told to him by one who never lied."
+Yet, at evening, when the weary wretch who works for newspapers returns to
+his tent, with his boots worn through with fruitless search for the author
+of the "news," he learns that once again he has been the dupe of the "camp
+liar"; and he may well be forgiven if he then heaps a whole continent of
+curses on the invisible shape which, forming itself into a lie, is small
+enough to enter a man's mouth, and yet big enough to permeate a whole camp.
+What is a camp liar? It is not a man, neither is it a maid, neither is it
+dog nor devil. It is a nameless shadow, which flits through the minds of
+men, fashioned by the Father of Evil to be a curse and a scourge to war
+correspondents. A mining liar is an awful liar, but he takes tangible form,
+and one can grapple with him when he appears upon a prospectus. A political
+liar is a pitiful liar, and vengeance finds him out upon the hustings, and
+eggs and the produce of the kitchen garden are his reward. A legal liar is
+a loquacious liar, but he is bounded by his brief and the extent of his
+fees. But the camp liar has no bounds, and is equally at home in all
+languages, at one moment dealing with an army in full marching order, and
+the next battening festively upon one man in a mudhole. There is no height
+to which the camp liar dare not ascend, there is nothing too trivial for it
+to touch. It has neither sex nor shape; but, like a fallen angel ousted
+from Heaven, and not wanted in Hades, it flits through camp a mental
+microbe, spawning falsehoods in the souls of soldiers.
+
+The camp liar concocts a story of a fearful fight, and fills the air with
+the groans of the dying, and makes a weird picture out of the grisly,
+grinning silence of the ghastly dead. Kopjes are stained a rich ripe red
+with the blood of heroes, and arms, and legs, and skulls, and shattered jaw
+bones hurtle through the air midst the sound of bursting shells, like
+straws in a stable-yard when the wind blows high. The very poetry of lying
+is touched with a master hand when charging squadrons sweep across the
+veldt and the sunlight kisses the soldier's steel. Then comes the pathos
+dear to the liar's soul--the farewells of the dying, sobbed just seven
+seconds before sunset into comrades' ears; the faltering voice, the
+tear-dimmed eyes, the death rattle in the throat, the last hand clasps, the
+last deep-drawn breath, in which--mother--Mary--and Heaven are always
+mingled; and then the moonlight and the moaning of the midnight
+wind!----The war correspondent leaps from the tent, springs into his saddle
+with his note-book in his mouth and an indelible lead pencil in each hand,
+and rides over kopje and veldt ten dreary miles to gaze upon the scene of
+that awful battle, and finds--one dead mule, and a nigger driver, dead
+drunk. Then, if he has had a religious education, he climbs out of the
+saddle, sinks on his knees, and prays for the peace of the camp liar's
+immortal soul. But if, as is often the case, he has had a secular
+upbringing, he spits on the dead mule, kicks the nigger, slinks back to
+camp by a roundabout route, and swears to everyone that he has been forty
+miles in another direction in a railway truck.
+
+Four or five days later, just at that hour in the morning when a man clings
+most fondly to his blankets, another rumour breaks the early morning's
+limpid silence, a rumour of a battle of great import raging eighteen miles
+away, just within easy riding distance for a smart correspondent. But the
+man of ink and hardships chuckles this time. He has been fooled so often by
+the imp of camp rumours; so murmurs just loud enough to be heard in heaven,
+"That infernal camp liar again," and rustles his blankets round his ears
+and drops cosily back into dreamland; but when, later on, he learns that an
+important battle has been fought, and he has missed it all because he did
+not want to be fooled by the camp liar, then what he mutters is muttered
+loud enough to be heard in a different place, and the folk there don't need
+ear trumpets to catch what he says either.
+
+
+
+
+
+                      CHARACTER SKETCHES IN CAMP.
+
+                         THE NIGGER SERVANT.
+
+
+It is raining outside my tent. It has rained for three days and nights, and
+looks quite capable of raining for three days more; everything is simply
+sodden. You try to look around you at the men's camps. At every step your
+boots go up to the ankle, squelch, in the black mud. You slip as you walk,
+and go down on your hands and knees in the slimy filth; that brings out all
+the poetry in your nature. If you have had a Christian training in your
+youth, you think of David dodging Saul, and your sympathies go out towards
+the stupid king. The mud is everywhere; the horses have trodden it to slime
+in many places, in others the feet of the soldiers have transformed it to
+batter. Everything is cold, dreary, dismal; even the tobacco is damp, and
+leaves a taste in a man's mouth like the receipt of bad news from home. I
+look at the soldiers hanging around like sheep round a blocked-up shed in a
+snow-storm, and I feel sympathetic. Their puttees are wet, and there is a
+suggestion of future rheumatism in every fold that encircles their calves;
+I can't see much more of them except their weather-beaten faces. They wear
+their helmets and their blue-black overcoats, but both are wet. They don't
+look happy, and the cause is not hard to find: they have slept out for
+three nights without tents. Their blankets are like sponges that have been
+left in a tub. Each blanket seems to hold about three gallons of water.
+
+I arrived at this computation by watching the men wringing their bedding.
+Two men got hold of a blanket, one at each end; they twist it different
+ways, and the water runs out in a stream. The soldiers relapse into
+language. Most of their adjectives have a decidedly pink tinge, and I
+shouldn't wonder if they became scarlet if this sort of weather continued.
+
+My nigger slops along through the slush and tells me that my lunch is
+ready. He is not a happy-looking nigger by any means. A white man looks bad
+enough in the mud and cold, but a nigger presents a pitiful spectacle. His
+face goes whitish green, with an undercurrent of slatey grey running
+through it. The brilliancy leaves the coal-black eyes, and they become as
+lifeless and limp as a professional politician at a prayer meeting. The
+mouth goes agape, the thick lips become flabby, and fall away from the
+teeth. The mouth does not seem to fit the face, but hangs on to it like a
+second-hand suit on a backyard fence. My nigger is no better, and no worse,
+than the rest of them. He looks like a chapter in Lamentations, and is
+about as much at home in the sodden camp as a bar of wet soap in a sand
+heap. Just now he is good for nothing except to sing doleful hymns in a key
+sad enough to frighten a transit mule away from a bag of mealies. When he
+is not singing sadly he is quoting Scripture and thinking about his
+immortal soul. When the sun comes out to-morrow and the day after, he will
+be dancing a most unholy dance or be making love to "Dinah," filling in the
+intervals by cursing in three different languages stray horses that steal
+our fodder.
+
+It is really astonishing what a difference the weather makes to the morals
+of the South African nigger. Give him plenty of sunshine, and he forgets he
+ever had a soul, and throws slabs of blasphemy, picked up from the Tommies
+around him, with painful liberality. When he gets tired of English oaths,
+he drops into Cape Dutch, and some of the curses contained in that language
+are solid enough to hurt anything they hit. Later on he drifts into his
+native tongue, raises his voice a couple of octaves, and streaks the
+atmosphere with multi-coloured oaths, until you imagine you are listening
+to a vocal rainbow. But take away the sunshine, give him a wet hide and a
+wet floor to camp on, and he straightway becomes all penitence and prayer.
+His face, peering out dismally between the upturned collar of his
+weather-stained coat and the down-drawn brim of his battered hat, looks
+like a soiled sermon, and he is altogether woeful.
+
+When the weather is warm he decks himself out in any piece of gaudy finery
+he can lay hands upon. He loves to wear a glaring yellow roll of silk or
+cloth around his hat, a blue or green 'kerchief about his throat, and a
+crimson girdle encircled about his loins. Then he thinks he is a midsummer
+sunset, and swaggers round like a peacock in full plumage, looking for
+something to "mash." He has no sense of the eternal law of averages. It
+does not trouble him if the whole seat of his most important garment is
+represented by a hole big enough to put a baby in, if he only has the
+artistic decorations I have mentioned above. Nor does he see anything out
+of the way in the fact that one of his feet is encased in an officer's top
+boot and the other in a remnant of a Boer farmer's cast-off veldtschoon.
+His soul yearns towards feathers. He will pluck a grand white plume from
+the tail of an ostrich if he gets a favourable opportunity, and place it
+triumphantly in his torn and soiled slouch hat, or he will pick up a
+discarded bonnet from a dust pile and rob it of feathers placed there by
+feminine hands, in order that he may look a black Beau Brummell.
+
+His manners, like his morals, change with the weather. When the barometer
+registers "fine and clear," you may expect a saucy answer if you rate him
+for a late breakast; when it registers "warm, and likely to be warmer," you
+may consider yourself lucky if you get a morning meal at all. But when it
+indicates "hot," and the mercury still rising, you know that the time has
+arrived for you to climb out of your coat and commence cooking for
+yourself, unless you feel equal to the task of spreading a saucy nigger in
+sections around the adjacent allotments. It is not always healthy to adopt
+the latter plan, especially if your "boy" happens to be a Basuto or a Zulu.
+Should he belong to either of those tribes, threaten him as much as you
+like, but don't hurry to put your threats into practice; or the nigger may
+do the scattering, and you may do the penitent part of the business. You
+may bully him as much as you like when the barometer is falling, for then
+the life is all out of him, and he has not sufficient spirit left in him to
+resent any sort of insult.
+
+Even "Tommy" knows this, and on a cold day will call a big Zulu servant by
+a name which implies that the Zulu's father and mother were never legally
+married. The Zulu will only smile dismally, and tell "Tommy" that he will
+pray for the salvation of his soul. Three days later, when the air is
+dancing in the heat-rays, if Mr. Atkins, emboldened by former success,
+repeats the speech, the Zulu will rise and confront him with blazing eyes,
+showing at the same time a wide range of beautiful white teeth, set in a
+savage snarl, and give Mr. Atkins a choice of titles which it would be hard
+to improve upon even in a Dublin dockyard, and he will not be slow to back
+his mouth with his hands should the argument become pressing, as more than
+one of her Majesty's lieges have found out to their deep and lasting
+humiliation.
+
+When a combination of rain and religion has depressed him the nigger
+servant is one of the most abject-looking mortals that ever wore clothes,
+and makes as sad a spectacle as a farmyard fowl on a front fence in a
+thunderstorm. But he must not be judged altogether by his appearance on
+such occasions. He can be loyal to his "boss," and when fit and well he
+will fight when roused as a devil might fight for the soul of a deacon. He
+loves to ride or drive a horse, but he is not fond of horses, as I
+understand the term. He has no idea of making a pet of his charge. A horse
+is to him merely something to get about upon, and he cannot understand our
+fondness for our equine friends. I have noticed the same trait in the Boer
+character. To a Boer a horse is usually merely a means of transit from spot
+to spot; not a comrade, not a companion. I was not astonished to find this
+feeling amongst the niggers, because I have noticed it among the natives in
+every colony in Australia, and even amongst such inveterate horsemen as the
+Sioux Indians of America and the Maories of New Zealand; but I was
+surprised to note how little sympathy existed between the Boer and his
+equine helper.
+
+The nigger servant is a sporting sort of party, and never loses an
+opportunity to indulge his tastes in this direction. I had an excellent
+chance the other day to note how fond he is of a bit of hunting. We had
+camped before sundown in a rather picturesque position, and I was watching
+the effect of the declining sun on the gloomy kopjes, when I noticed a
+commotion in all the camps, in front, at the rear, and on both flanks. In
+ten seconds every nigger in the whole camp had deserted his work and was
+frantically dashing out on to the veldt. They uttered shrill cries as they
+ran, and every man had some sort of weapon in his hand, either a tomahawk,
+a billet of wood, or a rock. With marvellous celerity they formed a huge
+circle, though what they were after was a puzzle to me. I fancied for
+awhile that one of their number must have run "amuck," and the rest meant
+to send him to slumber. Quickly they narrowed the circle, the whole body of
+them moving as if linked together and propelled by unseen mechanism. When
+the circle got about the third the size of an ordinary cricket ground I saw
+what they were after. A brace of hares had caught their eyes, and this was
+their method of capturing the fleet-footed, but stupid, "racers of the
+veldt." First one nigger and then another detached himself from the circle,
+and, darting in, had a shy at the quarry with whatever missile he had with
+him. If he missed--and a good many of them missed--the speedy little bit of
+fur, he returned crestfallen to the circle again, amidst jeers and laughter
+from the rest. The hares darted hither and thither in that ever narrowing
+circle of foes, until a couple of well-aimed shots, one with a rock as big
+as a cricket ball, and one with a tomahawk, laid them out, and they became
+the prize of the successful marksmen. The nigger "boy" has to be paid one
+pound a week and his "scoff," and, taking him all in all, in spite of his
+faults, which are many, I verily think he earns it.
+
+
+
+
+
+                        CHARACTER SKETCHES IN CAMP.
+
+                          THE SOLDIER PREACHER.
+
+                     (Written at Enslin Battlefield.)
+
+
+He was standing at eventide facing the rough and rugged heights of Enslin.
+The crimson-tinted clouds that emblazoned the sky cast a ruddy radiance
+round his head and face, making him appear like one of those ancient
+martyrs one is apt to see on stained-glass windows in old-world churches in
+Rome or Venice. His feet were firmly planted close to the graves of the
+British soldiers and sailors who had fallen when we beat the Boers and
+drove them back upon Modder River.
+
+In one hand he held a little, well-worn Bible; his other hand was raised
+high above his close-cropped head, whilst his voice rang out on the sultry,
+storm-laden air like the clang of steel on steel:
+
+"Prepare ter meet yer God!"
+
+No one who looked at the neat, strong figure arrayed in the plain khaki
+uniform of a private soldier, at the clean-shaven, square-jawed face, at
+the fearless grey-blue eyes, could doubt either his honesty or earnestness.
+Courage was imprinted by Nature's never-erring hand on every lineament of
+his Saxon features. So might one of Cromwell's stern-browed warriors have
+stood on the eve of Marston Moor.
+
+"Prepare ter meet yer God!"
+
+To the right of him the long lines of the tents spread upwards towards the
+kopje; to the left the veldt, with its wealth of grey-green grass, sown by
+the bounteous hand of the Great Harvester; all around him, excepting where
+the graves raised their red-brown furrows, rows of soldiers lounged,
+listing to the old, old story of man's weakness and eternal shame, and
+Christ's love and everlasting pity. On the soldier preacher's breast a long
+row of decorations gleamed, telling of honourable service to Queen and
+country. Before a man could wear those ribbons he must have faced death as
+brave men face it on many a battlefield. He must have known the agonies of
+thirst, the dull dead pain of sleepless nights and midnight marches, the
+tireless watching at the sentry's post, and the onward rush of armed men up
+heights almost unscalable. On Egypt's sun-scorched plains he must have
+faced the mad onslaughts of the Dervish hosts, and rallied with the men who
+held the lines at Abu Klea Wells, where gallant Burnaby was slain. The
+hills of Afghanistan must have re-echoed to his tread, else why the green
+and crimson ribbon that mingled with the rest? His eyes had flashed along
+the advancing lines of charging impi, led by Zulu chiefs. Yet never had
+they flashed with braver light than now, when, facing that half-mocking,
+half-reckless crowd, he cried:
+
+"Prepare ter meet yer God!"
+
+Rough as the thrust of a broken bayonet was his speech, unskilled in
+rhetoric his tongue, his periods unrounded as flying fragments of shrapnel
+shell; yet all who listened knew that every word came from the speaker's
+soul, from the magazine of truth. Some London slum had been his cradle, the
+gutters of the great city the only University his feet had known, the
+costers' dialect was native to his tongue; yet no smug Churchman crowned
+with the laurels of the schools could so have stirred the blood of those
+wild lads, fresh from the boundless bush and lawless mining camps beneath
+Australian suns.
+
+"Prepare ter meet yer God!"
+
+And even as he spoke we, who listened, plainly heard the rolling thunder of
+our guns as they spoke in sterner tones to the nation's foes from Modder
+River. It was no new figure that the soldier preacher placed before us. It
+was the same indignant Christ that swept the rabble from the Temple; the
+same great Christ who calmly faced the seething mob in Pilate's judgment
+hall; the same sweet Christ who took the babes upon His knee; the same
+Divine Christ who, with hyssop and gall, and mingled blood and tears,
+passed death's dread portals on the dark brow of Calvary. The same grand
+figure, but quaintly dressed in words that savoured of the London slums and
+of the soldier's camp, and yet so hedged around with earnest love and
+childlike faith that all its grossest trappings fell away and left us
+nothing but the ideal Christ.
+
+Once more we heard the distant batteries speak to those whose hands had
+rudely grasped the Empire's flag, and every rock, and hill, and crag, and
+stony height took up the echo, like a lion's roar, until the whispering
+wind was tremulous with sound. Then all was hushed except the preacher's
+voice.
+
+"Prepare ter meet yer God! I've come ter tell yer all abart a General whose
+armies hold ther City of Eternal Life. If you are wounded, throw yer rifles
+down, 'nd 'e will send the ambulance of 'is love, with Red Cross angels,
+and 'is adjutant, whose name is Mercy, to dress yer wounds. Throw down yer
+rifles 'nd surrender. No rebels can enter the City of Eternal Life. You
+can't storm ther walls, Or take ther gates at ther point of ther baynit,
+for ther ramparts are guarded 'nd ther sentries never sleep. When ther
+bugles sound ther larst reville you will ever 'ear, 'nd ther colonel, whose
+name is Death, gives the order ter march, you'll have nothink to fear
+abart, if yer bandoliers are full o' faith 'nd yer rifles are sighted with
+good works. Yer uniforms may be ragged, and you may not even have a
+corporal's stripe to show; but if yer can pass ther sentries fearlessly,
+you'll find a general's commission waitin' for yer just inside ther gate.
+But yer earn't fool with my General. Remember this: ther password is,
+'Repentance,' 'nd nothink else will do. The sentry on duty will see you
+comin' and will challenge you. 'Who goes there?' 'Friend!' 'Advance,
+friend, 'nd give ther counter-sign!' If you say, 'Good works,' you'll find
+'is baynit up against yer chest. If yer say you forgot to get it, you'll be
+in ther clink in 'ell in ther twinklin' of an eye; but if yer say, loud 'nd
+clear, 'Repentance,' 'e will lower 'is baynit 'nd say, 'Pass, friend. All's
+well!'"
+
+
+
+
+
+                              PRESIDENT STEYN.
+
+
+Out on the veldt, far from the wife and home he loves so well, he stands,
+our country's bold, unyielding foe. And even as he stands he knows that the
+finger of Fate has written his own and his country's doom in letters large
+and deep on the walls of time. Yet, with unblenching brow, he waits the
+falling of the thunderbolt, a calm, grand figure, fit to live in history's
+pages when every memory of meaner men has passed into oblivion, M.T. Steyn,
+President of the shattered Free State of South Africa. Around this man the
+human jackals howl to try with lying lips to foul his memory. Yet, as a
+rock, age after age, throws back with contemptuous strength the waves that
+break against its base, so every action of his manly life gives the lie to
+tales which cowards tell.
+
+He is our foe, no stabber in the dark, moving with stealthy steps amidst
+professions of pretended peace, but in the open, where the gaze of God and
+man can rest upon him, he stands, defiant, though undone. He staked his
+country's freedom, his earthly happiness, and his high position in the
+great game of war; staked all that mortal man holds dear; staked it for
+what? For love of gain! May he who spawned that lie to stir our people's
+hearts to boundless wrath against this falling man live to repent in
+sackcloth and in tears the evil deed so done. . . . Staked it for what? To
+feed his own ambition! I tell you no; the undercurrent which brought forth
+the deed sprang from a nobler and a higher source. His country stood
+pledged in time of peace to help in time of war a sister State, and when
+the bond fell due he honoured it, though none knew better than this noble
+man that when he loosed the dogs of war he crossed a lion's path.
+
+Now he is tottering to his fall, amidst the ruins of a crumbling State,
+forsaken by the Powers that egged him on with covert promises of armed
+support, abandoned to the tender mercies of his foes by those on whose
+behalf he drew the sword. Yet, even now, the dauntless spirit of the man
+rises above the wreckage of disaster. A little band of heroes ring him
+round. Though every man in all that fearless few is England's foe, yet we,
+who boast the Vikings' blood in every vein, can we not honour them? So did
+our forefathers stand round Harold when Norman William trod with armed heel
+on English soil. So stood our fathers when Blucher's laggard step hung back
+from Waterloo. Are we not great enough to look with pride upon a gallant
+foe? Or has our nation fallen from its high estate, has chivalry departed
+from our blood, and left us nothing but the dregs which go to make a nation
+of hucksters? If so, then let us leave the battlefields to better men, and
+train our children solely for the market-place. But these are idle words,
+born of the spleen which such a thought engenders. Full well I know the
+temper of our people, terrible in their wrath, but swift to see the
+nobleness in those who face them boldly.
+
+And these be noble men, my masters. They rally round their chief, as you
+and yours would rally round a British leader if foreign hordes swept with
+resistless might over England's historic soil. All that they loved they've
+lost, and nothing now remains to them but honour and a patriot's grave; and
+in the grim game of war it is our stern task to give them what they seek--a
+soldier's death beneath the doomed flag which, in their stubborn pride,
+they will never forsake. But even whilst we hem them round with bristling
+bayonets, ready for the last dread act in this red drama, let us pay them
+the tribute due to all brave men; for he who gives his life to guard a
+cause he holds most dear is worthy of our admiration, though he be ten
+thousand times our foe. What should we think of men who, left to guard the
+Kentish fields, threw down their arms and sued for peace to any leader of
+an invading host because our cause seemed lost? Should we not curse them as
+a craven crowd, and teach our lisping babes to mock their memory? Would any
+fair-faced girl in all the British Isles wed any man who would not fight
+until the sinews slackened with slaying in defence of the homeland? If so,
+they are not fashioned of the metal of which their granddames were made.
+
+And what we honour as the prince of virtues in a Briton shall we condemn as
+vice in this little band of Free State Boers and their leader, loyal to a
+lost cause? No, England, no! It is not you that shriek anathemas to the
+weeping skies because the foe dies hard. The gutter gamin and the brutal
+lout who never owned a soul fit to rise above the level of the kettle
+singing on the hearth may brand the name of Steyn and his stout burghers
+with infamy; but the clean-souled people of the Motherland, the people from
+whose ranks our greatest fighters and thinkers spring, will not endorse
+that cry. No, not though every slanderous throat shall shriek until they
+cannot wail an octave higher.
+
+It is not from such great men as Roberts that we hear these pitiful tales
+concerning those who give us battle. He who has been a man of war from
+childhood to old age would never stoop to soil his manly lips to woo the
+fleeting favours of a mob, and he has proved himself as wise in council as
+upon the death-strewn fields of war. So wise, so brave, so loyal to his
+word, that even those whom he, at his country's call, has had to crush,
+lift their hats reverently at the mention of his name, because he wears
+upon his hero soul the white flower of a blameless life. Would Kitchener,
+whose dread name strikes terror to the heart of every burgher, would he
+befoul his foeman's fame? I tell you no, though whilst a foe remains in
+arms he strikes with all a giant's force and spares not; but when the blow
+has fallen, he of all men would preserve his enemies' fair fame intact. So
+it should be whilst those who stand in arms against our country and our
+country's flag refuse the terms we offer. We should make war so terrible
+that every enemy should dread the sound of British bugles as they would
+dread the trump of doom. When once the country's voice has called for war,
+then war should sweep with resistless might over land and sea, until sweet
+peace should seem a boon to be desired above all earthly things by those
+who stand in arms against us. If Steyn and those who with heroic hearts
+hedge him round refuse to bow to destiny and the God of Battles, then he
+and they must fall before the bayonets of our soldiery as growing corn
+falls before the sickle of the reaper. But even in their fall they can
+claim as their heaven-born heritage our nation's deepest admiration for
+their dauntless devotion to their love of country, home, and kindred. And
+we will but add laurels to the renown our soldiers have won if we, with
+unsparing hand, mete out to them the praises due to manly foes. Ours be the
+task to slay them where they stand; not ours the task to rob them of the
+glory they have won.
+
+
+
+
+
+                             LOUIS BOTHA,
+                      COMMANDANT-GENERAL OF THE
+                              BOER ARMY.
+
+
+Louis Botha, who has cut so deep a mark in the pages of history, is only a
+young man yet, being about seven-and-thirty years of age. He is a "fine
+figure of a man," standing in the neighbourhood of six feet in his boots.
+His face is handsome, intellectual, and determined; his expression kindly
+and compassionate. The razor never touches his face, but his brown beard is
+always neatly trimmed, for the young Commandant-General is particular in
+regard to his personal appearance in a manly way, though in no respect
+foppish. He is now, and always has been, an excellent athlete, a good rifle
+shot, and a first-class horseman; not given at any time to indoor pastimes
+over much, though fond of a quiet game of whist. He was born in Natal, of
+Dutch parents, and married to Miss Emmett, a relative of Robert Emmett, the
+Irish Revolutionist. Young Botha was educated at Greytown, and though a
+good, sound commercial scholar, he gave no evidence in his schoolboy days
+of what was in him. No one who knew him then would have dreamed that before
+he was forty years of age he would be the foremost soldier of his country.
+His folk were moderately well off, but the adventurous spirit of the future
+general sent him inland from Natal when a large number of Natal and Free
+State Boers enlisted under the flag of General Lucas Meyer, who was bent
+upon making war upon a powerful negro tribe in the neighbourhood of
+Vryheid. During the fighting young Botha was his general's right-hand man,
+displaying even at that early age a cool, level head and a stout heart.
+When the Boers were firmly settled upon the land Vryheid was declared a
+Republic, and Lucas Meyer was elected first President. But the new Republic
+lasted only about three years, and was then, by mutual consent, merged into
+Transvaal territory, and both Lucas Meyer and Louis Botha were elected
+members of the Volksraad. Louis Botha retained his seat right up to the
+time hostilities broke out between Great Britain and the Republics under
+Mr. Kruger and Mr. Steyn.
+
+During the many stormy scenes which preceded the actual declaration of war
+Louis Botha proved that he possessed the coolest and most level head in the
+Volksraad. He opposed the war, and, with prophetic eye, foresaw the awful
+devastation of his country which would follow in the footsteps of the
+British army. But when the time came, and his country was irretrievably
+pledged to war, he was not the man to hang back. He was one of those who
+had much to lose and little indeed to gain by taking up arms against us,
+for, by honest industry, he had become a wealthy farmer and stockbreeder.
+At the first call to arms he threw aside his senatorial duties, and took up
+his rifle, rejoining his old commando at Vryheid as commandant under
+General Lucas Meyer. It is said that at the battle of Dundee General Meyer,
+feeling convinced that the God of Battles had decided against him and his
+forces, decided to surrender to the British, but Louis Botha fiercely
+combated his general's decision, and point-blank refused to throw down his
+arms or counsel his men to do so. What followed all the world knows, and
+Botha went up very high in the estimation of the better class of fighting
+burghers. At the Tugela, before the first big battle took place, General
+Meyer was taken ill, and had to retire to Pretoria, and Louis Botha was
+then elected assistant-general, and the planning of the battle was left
+entirely to him.
+
+It was a terribly responsible position to place so young a man in, for he
+was face to face with the then Commander-in-Chief of the British army, Sir
+Redvers Buller, a general of dauntless determination and undoubted ability.
+Experience, men, and all the munitions of war were in favour of the British
+general; but the awful nature of the country was upon the side of the newly
+fledged Boer leader, and he made terrible use of it. The day of Colenso,
+when Sir Redvers Buller received his first decisive check, will not soon be
+forgotten in the annals of our Army. A man of weaker fibre than the British
+leader would have been daunted by the disasters of that day, for there he
+lost ten guns and a large number of men. But Buller carried in his blood
+all the old grit of our race, and the heavier the check the more his soul
+was set upon ultimate victory. I have been over that battle ground, and
+have looked at the positions taken up by Louis Botha. They were chosen with
+consummate skill, born of a thorough knowledge of the nature of the country
+and inherent generalship.
+
+I have looked at the country Sir Redvers Buller had to pass through to get
+at his wise and skilful adversary. The man who dared make the attempt that
+Buller made must have had nerves of steel, and a soul that would not blench
+if ordered to storm the very gates of Hades. The worst fighting ground that
+I saw in all the Free State was but a mockery of war compared to the ground
+around Colenso, and I have seen some terrible places in the Free State. But
+a man has to see the ground Buller fought in to realise the magnitude of
+the task the Empire set him at the beginning of the war. Great as Lord
+Roberts is, I doubt if he would have done more than Buller did under the
+same circumstances.
+
+That battle of Colenso made young Louis Botha famous, and from that hour
+the eyes of the burghers were turned towards him as the one man fit to lead
+them. At Spion Kop, when the Boer leader, Schalk Burger, vacated the
+splendid position he had been ordered to take up, Louis Botha's genius
+grasped the mighty import of the situation, and he at once realised that
+Schalk Burger had blundered terribly, and it was he who retook those
+positions with such disastrous consequences to our forces. His fame spread
+far and near, and his name became a thing to conjure with. When the
+Commandant-General of the Boer Army, General Joubert, lay dying, he was
+asked who was the best man to fill his place. And he, the grey veteran, did
+not hesitate for a second, but with his dying breath gasped out the name of
+Louis Botha. The Boer Government promptly appointed him to the position,
+and from that day to this he has been the paramount military power in the
+Boer lines. He is not the only one of his line fighting under the Transvaal
+flag. There are four other brothers in the field, one of whom, Christian
+Botha, is now a general, and a good fighter. As a soldier Louis Botha has
+proved himself a foeman worthy the steel of any of our generals; as a man
+his worst enemy can say nothing derogatory concerning him, for in all his
+actions he has borne himself like a gentleman. He is generous and courteous
+in the hour of victory, stout-hearted and self-reliant in the time of
+disaster--just the type of soldier that a great nation like ours knows how
+to esteem, even though he is an enemy in arms against us.
+
+
+
+
+
+                          WHITE FLAG TREACHERY.
+
+
+Few things have astonished me more during the progress of this war than the
+number of charges levelled against our foes in reference to the treacherous
+use of the white flag. Almost every newspaper that came my way contained
+some such account; yet, though constantly at the front for nine months, I
+cannot recall one solitary instance of such treachery which I could vouch
+for. I have heard of dozens of cases, and have taken the trouble to
+investigate a good many, but never once managed to obtain sufficient proof
+to satisfy me that the charge was genuine. On one occasion I was following
+close on the heels of our advancing troops, and had for a comrade a rather
+excitable correspondent. When within about fourteen hundred yards of the
+kopjes we were advancing to attack, the Boers opened a heavy rifle fire;
+and, though we could not see a solitary enemy, our fellows began to drop.
+It was very evident that the enemy were secreted in the rocks not far from
+a substantial farmhouse, from the roof of which floated a large white flag
+(it turned out later to be a tablecloth braced to a broom handle).
+
+"There's another case of d---- white flag treachery," shouted my companion.
+"I wonder the general don't turn the guns on that farm and blow it to
+Hades."
+
+"What for?" I asked.
+
+"What for! Why, they are flying the white flag, and shooting from the
+farmhouse. Isn't that enough?"
+
+"Quite enough, if true," I replied. "But how the devil do you know they are
+shooting from the farmhouse?"
+
+"They must be shooting from the farmhouse," he yelled. "Why, I've been
+scouring all the rocks around with my glasses, and can't see a blessed Boer
+in any of 'em. No, sir, you can bet your soul they are skulking in that
+farm. They know we won't loose a shell on the white flag---the cowards!"
+
+I did not think it worth while to argue with a man of that stamp, but kept
+my glasses on that farm very closely during the fight that followed. Right
+up to the time when our men rushed the kopjes and surrounded the farmhouse
+I did not see a man enter or leave the house, and when I rode up I found
+that two women and three children were in possession. Furthermore, on
+examination, I soon discovered that, as the doors and windows faced the
+wrong way, it would have been impossible for a Boer to do much shooting at
+our men, unless the walls at the gable end were loopholed, which they were
+not, I know, for I examined them minutely. Fortunately for the credit of
+the British Army, most of our generals are coolheaded men who do not allow
+the irresponsible chatter of the army to influence them. Otherwise our guns
+would have been trained upon many a homestead on charges quite as flimsy
+and groundless as the one quoted above.
+
+I suppose that cases of treachery have really occurred during the war. In a
+mixed crowd like that which composes the burgher army, there are sure to be
+some mortals fit to do any mean trick, just as sure as there are men fit to
+do or say anything in the British Army, But I cannot, and I will not,
+believe that the great bulk of these men are such paltry cowards as to make
+the "white flag" act a common one. It may be news to British readers to
+know that the burghers complain of the behaviour of our troops as bitterly
+as we complain of theirs; and I think, from personal observation, that
+their charges are as groundless as are some charges made by the same class
+of hysterical individuals, though of different nationality. Their pet
+hatred, when I was a prisoner in their hands, was the Lancers. They used to
+swear that the Lancers never spared a wounded man, but ran him through as
+they galloped past him. I was told this fifty times, and each time told my
+informant flatly that I declined to believe the assertion, and should
+continue to disbelieve it until I had undeniable proof, for it would take a
+good deal to convince me that a British soldier would strike a fallen foe
+even in the heat and stress of battle. One day they asked me to come and
+look at the dead body of one of their field cornets, whom they alleged to
+have been done to death whilst wounded by our Lancers. I went and saw the
+man, and at a glance saw that the wounds were not lance wounds at all, but
+ripping bullet wounds. He had been sniped by some Australian riflemen from
+a high kopje whilst in a valley. I tried to explain this to the excited
+burghers, but they only sneered at me for my trouble, until one of their
+own doctors coming along had a look at the corpse, and promptly verified my
+statements. That calmed them considerably, and they looked at the thing in
+cooler blood, and soon saw that it was really absurd to put the blame of
+the man's death on the shoulders of the Lancers, though they stoutly
+maintained that our cavalry were at times guilty of such monstrous conduct.
+I have often heard them solemnly swear never to give a Lancer a chance to
+surrender if they once got him within rifle range.
+
+Personally, I could never see just what the Boers would gain by the white
+flag business. As a rule, our troops did not want coaxing into rifle range;
+they marched within hitting distance readily enough, and did not require a
+white flag to lure them into a tight place, so that the object to be gained
+by the enemy by such disgraceful tactics never seemed to me to be too
+apparent. If they had ever by such means been able to entrap an army, or to
+bring about the wholesale slaughter of our men, I could understand things a
+bit better; but they had little to gain and an awful lot to lose by such
+tactics. There is no slight risk attached to the act of firing on an
+advancing army treacherously under cover of the white flag. Such a deed
+rouses all the slumbering devil in the men, and the foe found guilty of
+such a deed would get more bayonet than he would find conducive to his
+health when it came to his turn to be beaten.
+
+
+
+
+
+                     THE BATTLE OF MAGERSFONTEIN.
+
+                                                             MAGERSFONTEIN.
+
+
+The Australians, after relieving Belmont from the Boer commando, suddenly
+received orders to march upon Enslin, as the Boers had attacked that place,
+which was held by two companies of the Northamptonshires under Captain
+Godley; the latter had no artillery, whilst the enemy, who were over 1,000
+strong, had one 12-pounder gun with them, but the sequel proved that the
+Boer is a poor fighter in the open country. He is hard to beat in hilly and
+rocky ground when acting on the defensive, but he is not over dangerous as
+an attacking power. Let him choose his ground, and fight according to his
+own traditions, and the best soldiers in the world will find it no sinecure
+to oust him. As soon as the Boers put in an appearance at Enslin,
+Lieutenant Brierly, of the Northumberland Fusiliers, who is attached to the
+Northamptons, made his way to a kopje, which had formerly been held by Boer
+forces, and a mere handful of men fairly held the enemy in check at that
+point for over seven hours. The enemy made frantic efforts to dislodge this
+gallant little band, but failed dismally, and they had not the heart to try
+to take the kopje by storm, though there were enough of them around the
+hill to have eaten the little band of Britishers. In the meantime Captain
+Godley and his men held the township. Again and again the enemy threatened
+to rush the place, but their valour melted before the determined front of
+the besieged, and they drew off, taking their gun with them, their scouts
+having warned them that the Australians, with a section of the Royal Horse
+Artillery and two guns, were coming upon them from the direction of
+Belmont, whilst a body of the 12th Lancers and a battery of artillery were
+dashing down from Modder River. The Australians, who are now 720 strong,
+the New South Wales Company of 125 men having joined Colonel Head's forces,
+remained at Enslin, and entrenched there in order to keep open the line of
+communication between General Methuen's army and Orange River; a section of
+Royal Horse Artillery and two guns is with them. On half a dozen occasions
+the Boers have threatened to sweep down upon them from the hilly country
+adjacent, but up to the time of writing nothing serious has occurred.
+
+On Sunday last we heard the sound of heavy firing coming from the direction
+of Modder River; scouts coming in informed us that an engagement between
+General Methuen's force and the enemy, under the astute General Cronje, had
+commenced. Seeing that Australia was liable to remain idle for the time
+being, I determined to push on with my assistant, Mr. E. Monger, of
+Coolgardie, West Australia. When we arrived at Modder River we found the
+fight raging at a spot about four and a half miles beyond Modder River
+bridge. Our forces were in possession of the river and the plain beyond;
+but General Cronje had entrenched himself in a line of ranges stretching
+for several miles across the veldt. So well had the Boer general chosen his
+ground, and such good use had he made of the natural advantages of his
+position, that the British found themselves face to face with an African
+Gibraltar. The frowning rocks were bristling with rifles, which commanded
+the plain below, trenches seamed the hillsides in all directions, and in
+those trenches lay concealed the picked marksmen of the veldt--men who,
+though they know but little of soldiering from a European point of view,
+yet had been familiar with the rifle from earliest boyhood; rough and
+uncouth in appearance, dressed in farmers' garb, still under those
+conditions, fighting under a general they knew and trusted, amidst
+surroundings familiar to them from infancy, they were foemen worthy of the
+respect of the veteran troops of any nation under heaven.
+
+At every post of vantage Cronje, with consummate generalship, had posted
+his artillery so that it would be almost impossible for our guns to silence
+them, whilst at the same time he could sweep the plains below should our
+infantry attempt to storm the heights at the point of the bayonet. At the
+bottom of the kopjes, right under the muzzle of his guns, he had excavated
+trenches deep enough to hide his riflemen, but he had thrown up no
+earthworks, so that our guns could not locate the exact spot where his
+rifle trenches lay. All the earth from the trenches had been very carefully
+removed, and the low blue bush which covers these plains completely
+screened his trenches from view. In front of the trenches, and extending
+some considerable distance out in front of the veldt, the clever Boer
+leader had placed an immense amount of barbed wire entanglement, so
+fashioned that no cavalry could live amongst it, whilst even the very
+flower of our infantry would find it hard work to charge over it, even in
+daylight. The Boer forces are variously estimated at from 12,000 to 15,000
+men. The number and nature of their guns can only be guessed at, but that
+the enemy's men are well supplied in that respect there can be no question.
+Our forces I estimate at about 11,000 men of all arms, including the
+never-to-be-forgotten section of the Naval Brigade, to whom England owes a
+debt of gratitude too deep for words to portray; for their steadiness,
+valour, and accuracy of shooting saved England from disaster on this the
+blackest day that Scotland has known since the Crimea.
+
+Our troops extended over many miles of country. Every move had to be made
+in full view of the enemy upon a level plain where a collie dog could not
+have moved unperceived by those foemen hidden so securely behind
+impregnable ramparts. During the whole of Sunday our gunners played havoc
+with the enemy, the shooting of the Naval Brigade being of such a nature
+that even thus early in the fight the big gun of the bluejackets, with its
+42-pound lyddite shell, struck terror into the hearts of the enemy. But the
+Boers were not idle. Whenever our infantry, in manoeuvring, came within
+range'of their rifles, our ranks began to thin out, and the blood of our
+gallant fellows dyed the sun-baked veldt in richest crimson.
+
+During the night that followed it was considered expedient that the
+Highland Brigade, about 4,000 strong, under General Wauchope, should get
+close enough to the lines of the foe to make it possible to charge the
+heights. At midnight the gallant, but ill-fated, general moved cautiously
+through the darkness towards the kopje where the Boers were most strongly
+entrenched. They were led by a guide, who was supposed to know every inch
+of the country, out into the darkness of an African night. The brigade
+marched in line of quarter-column, each man stepping cautiously and slowly,
+for they knew that any sound meant death. Every order was given in a hoarse
+whisper, and in whispers it was passed along the ranks from man to man;
+nothing was heard as they moved towards the gloomy, steel-fronted heights
+but the brushing of their feet in the veldt grass and the deep-drawn
+breaths of the marching men.
+
+So, onward, until three of the clock on the morning of Monday. Then out of
+the darkness a rifle rang, sharp and clear, a herald of disaster--a soldier
+had tripped in the dark over the hidden wires laid down by the enemy. In a
+second, in the twinkling of an eye, the searchlights of the Boers fell
+broad and clear as the noonday sun on the ranks of the doomed Highlanders,
+though it left the enemy concealed in the shadows of the frowning mass of
+hills behind them. For one brief moment the Scots seemed paralysed by the
+suddenness of their discovery, for they knew that they were huddled
+together like sheep within fifty yards of the trenches of the foe. Then,
+clear above the confusion, rolled the voice of the general--"Steady, men,
+steady!"--and, like an echo to the veterans, out came the crash of nearly
+a thousand rifles not fifty paces from them. The Highlanders reeled before
+the shock like trees before the tempest. Their best, their bravest, fell in
+that wild hail of lead. General Wauchope was down, riddled with bullets;
+yet, gasping, dying, bleeding from every vein, the Highland chieftain
+raised himself on his hands and knees, and cheered his men forward. Men and
+officers fell in heaps together.
+
+The Black Watch charged, and the Gordons and the Seaforths, with a yell
+that stirred the British camp below, rushed onward--onward to death or
+disaster. The accursed wires caught them round the legs until they
+floundered, like trapped wolves, and all the time the rifles of the foe
+sang the song of death in their ears. Then they fell back, broken and
+beaten, leaving nearly 1,300 dead and wounded just where the broad breast
+of the grassy veldt melts into the embrace of the rugged African hills, and
+an hour later the dawning came of the dreariest day that Scotland has known
+for a generation-past. Of her officers, the flower of her chivalry, the
+pride of her breeding, but few remained to tell the tale--a sad tale truly,
+but one untainted with dishonour or smirched with disgrace, for up those
+heights under similar circumstances even a brigade of devils could scarce
+have hoped to pass. All that mortal men could do the Scots did; they tried,
+they failed, they fell. And there is nothing left us now but to mourn for
+them, and avenge them; and I am no prophet if the day is distant when the
+Highland bayonet will write the name of Wauchope large and deep in the best
+blood of the Boers.
+
+All that fateful day our wounded men lay close to the Boer lines under a
+blazing sun; over their heads the shots of friends and foes passed without
+ceasing. Many a gallant deed was done by comrades helping comrades; men who
+were shot through the body lay without water, enduring all the agony of
+thirst engendered by their wounds and the blistering heat of the day; to
+them crawled Scots with shattered limbs, sharing the last drop of water in
+their bottles, and taking messages to be delivered to mourning women in the
+cottage home of far-off Scotland. Many a last farewell was whispered by
+pain-drawn lips in between the ringing of the rifles, many a rough soldier
+with tenderest care closed the eyes of a brother in arms amidst the tempest
+and the stir of battle; and above it all, Cronje, the Boer general, must
+have smiled grimly, for well he knew that where the Highland Brigade had
+failed all the world might falter. All day long the battle raged; scarcely
+could we see the foe--all that met our eyes was the rocky heights that
+spoke with tongues of flame whenever our troops drew near. We could not
+reach their lines; it was murder, grim and ghastly, to send the infantry
+forward to fight a foe they could not see and could not reach. Once our
+Guards made a brilliant dash at the trenches, and, like a torrent, their
+resistless valour bore all before them, and for a few brief moments they
+got within hitting distance of the foe. Well did they avenge the slaughter
+of the Scots; the bayonets, like tongues of flame, passed above or below
+the rifles' guard, and swept through brisket and breastbone. Out of their
+trenches the Guardsmen tossed the Boers, as men in English harvest fields
+toss the hay when the reapers' scythes have whitened the cornfields; and
+the human sheaves were plentiful where the British Guardsmen stood. Then
+they fell back, for the fire from the heights above them fell thick as the
+spume of the surf on an Australian rock-ribbed coast. But the Guards had
+proved to the Boers that, man to man, the Briton was his master.
+
+In vain all that day Methuen tried by every rule he knew to draw the enemy;
+vainly, the Lancers rode recklessly to induce those human rock limpets to
+come out and cut them off. Cronje knew the mettle of our men, and an ironic
+laugh played round his iron mouth, and still he stayed within his native
+fastness; but Death sat ever at his elbow, for our gunners dropped the
+lyddite shells and the howling shrapnel all along his lines, until the
+trenches ran blood, and many of his guns were silenced. In the valley
+behind his outer line of hills his dead lay piled in hundreds, and the
+slope of the hill was a charnel-house where the wounded all writhed amidst
+the masses of the dead; a ghastly tribute to British gunnery. For hours I
+stood within speaking distance of the great naval gun as it spoke to the
+enemy, and such a sight as their shooting the world has possibly never
+witnessed. Not a shell was wasted; cool as if on the decks of a pleasure
+yacht our tars moved through the fight, obeying orders with smiling
+alacrity. Whenever the signal came from the balloon above us that the enemy
+were moving behind their lines, the sailors sent a message from England
+into their midst, and the name of the messenger was Destruction; and when,
+at 1.30 p.m. of Tuesday, we drew off to Modder River to recuperate we left
+a ghastly pile of dead and wounded of grim old Cronje's men as a token that
+the lion of England had bared his teeth in earnest.
+
+Three hundred yards to the rear of the little township of Modder River,
+just as the sun was sinking in a blaze of African splendour on the evening
+of Tuesday, the 13th of December, a long, shallow grave lay exposed in the
+breast of the veldt. To the westward, the broad river, fringed with trees,
+ran murmuringly, to the eastward, the heights still held by the enemy
+scowled menacingly, north and south, the veldt undulated peacefully; a few
+paces to the northward of that grave fifty dead Highlanders lay, dressed as
+they had fallen on the field of battle; they had followed their chief to
+the field, and they were to follow him to the grave. How grim and stern
+those dead men looked as they lay face upward to the sky, with great hands
+clenched in the last death agony, and brows still knitted with the stern
+lust of the strife in which they had fallen. The plaids dear to every
+Highland clan were represented there, and, as I looked, out of the distance
+came the sound of the pipes; it was the General coming to join his men.
+There, right under the eyes of the enemy, moved with slow and solemn tread
+all that remained of the Highland Brigade. In front of them walked-the
+chaplain, with bared head, dressed in his robes of office, then came the
+pipers, with their pipes, sixteen in all, and behind them, with arms
+reversed, moved the Highlanders, dressed in all the regalia of their
+regiments, and in the midst the dead General, borne by four of his
+comrades. Out swelled the pipes to the strains of "The Flowers of the
+Forest," now ringing proud and high until the soldier's head went back in
+haughty defiance, and eyes flashed through tears like sunlight on steel;
+now sinking to a moaning wail, like a woman mourning for her first-born,
+until the proud heads dropped forward till they rested on heaving chests,
+and tears rolled down the wan and scarred faces, and the choking sobs broke
+through the solemn rhythm of the march of death. Right up to the grave they
+marched, then broke away in companies, until the General lay in the shallow
+grave with a Scottish square of armed men around him, only the dead man's
+son and a small remnant of his officers stood with the chaplain and the
+pipers whilst the solemn service of the Church was spoken.
+
+Then once again the pipes pealed out, and "Lochaber No More" cut through
+the stillness like a cry of pain, until one could almost hear the widow in
+her Highland home moaning for the soldier she would welcome back no more.
+Then, as if touched by the magic of one thought, the soldiers turned their
+tear-damp eyes from the still form in the shallow grave towards the heights
+where Cronje, the "lion of Africa," and his soldiers stood. Then every
+cheek flushed crimson, and the strong jaws set like steel, and the veins on
+the hands that clasped the rifle barrels swelled almost to bursting with
+the fervour of the grip, and that look from those silent, armed men spoke
+more eloquently than ever spoke the tongues of orators. For on each
+frowning face the spirit of vengeance sat, and each sparkling eye asked
+silently for blood. God help the Boers when next the Highland pibroch
+sounds! God rest the Boers' souls when the Highland bayonets charge, for
+neither death, nor hell, nor things above, nor things below, will hold the
+Scots back from their blood feud. At the head of the grave, at the point
+nearest the enemy, the General was laid to sleep, his officers grouped
+around him, whilst in line behind him his soldiers were laid in a double
+row, wrapped in their blankets. No shots were fired over the dead men
+resting so peacefully, only the salute was given, and then the men marched
+campwards as the darkness of an African night rolled over the
+far-stretching breadth of the veldt. To the gentlewoman who bears their
+General's name the Highland Brigade sends its deepest sympathy. To the
+mothers and the wives, the sisters and the sweethearts, in cottage home by
+hillside and glen they send their love and good wishes--sad will their
+Christmas be, sadder the new year. Yet, enshrined in every womanly heart,
+from Queen Empress to cottage girl, let their memory lie, the memory of the
+men of the Highland Brigade who died at Magersfontein.
+
+
+
+
+
+                          SCOUTS AND SCOUTING.
+
+                        DRISCOLL, KING OF SCOUTS.
+
+                                                       ORANGE RIVER COLONY.
+
+
+I have a weakness for scouts. Good scouts seem to me to be of more
+importance to an army in the field than all the tape-tied intelligence
+officers out of Hades. They don't get on well with the regular officers as
+a rule, because scouts are like poets--they are born, not manufactured.
+They are people who do not feel as if God had forsaken them for ever if
+they don't get a shave and a clean shirt every morning, they are just a
+trifle rough in their appearance and manners; but they ride as straight as
+they talk, and shoot straighter than they ride. They have to be built for
+the business. All the training in the world won't make a scout unless
+nature has commenced the job; mere pluck is not worth a dog's bark in this
+line of life, though without pluck no scout is worth a wanton woman's
+smile. A good scout wants any amount of courage; he wants a level head--a
+head of ice, and a heart of fire. He wants to know by instinct when to rush
+onward and chance his life to the heels of his horse and the goodness of
+God, and he wants to know with unfailing certainty when to crawl into cover
+and hide. He must understand how to ride with no other guide than the lay
+of the country, the course of the sun, or the position of the stars. He
+must have eyes that note every broken hill, every little hollow, every
+footprint of man or horse on the veldt.
+
+He must be an excellent judge of distance, of time, of numbers. He must be
+able to tell at a glance whether a cloud of dust is caused by moving troops
+or by the action of the elements. Above all, he must be truthful, not given
+to exaggeration of his friends' strength or his enemy's weakness. When he
+makes his report it should need no corroboration. If a scout is worth his
+salt, his advice should be accepted and acted upon promptly.
+
+I often go out with the scouts; they are the eyes of the army. A man who
+knocks around with scouting parties knows more, sees more, hears more of
+the real state of affairs than nine-tenths of the staff officers ever know,
+hear, or see. Men fresh from the Old Country seldom make good scouts. Take
+the Yeomanry, for instance. They are plucky enough, but not one in a
+hundred of them has the making of a scout in him. All his fathers and his
+grandfather's and his great-grandfather's breeding trends in other
+directions, and there is an awful lot more in the breeding of men than most
+folk imagine. The American makes a good scout. If he knows nothing of the
+life, he soon picks it up. So does the Australian, and the Canadian, and
+the Colonial-born South African. Something in the life appeals to them.
+They get the "hang" of it with very little trouble. There are some
+English-born men, however, who develop into rattling great scouts. These
+men are mostly adventurous fellows, who have roamed about the world, and
+had the corners knocked off them. I have two of them in my mind's eye just
+at present. One of them is an Irishman named Driscoll, Captain of the
+Scouts who are the eyes and ears of Rundle's army. The other is an
+Englishman named Davies, a captain in the same gallant little band. The
+first lieutenant is a Cape colonial of English extraction, named Brabant, a
+gallant son of a gallant general. Captain Driscoll is a typical Irishman,
+just such a man as the soul of Charles Lever would have revelled in, a man
+of dauntless daring, with a heart of iron, and a face to match. Strangely
+enough, the captain does not pride himself a bit on his pluck, but he
+thinks a deuce of a lot of his beauty. As a matter of fact, he has the
+courage of ten ordinary men, but he would not take a prize in a first-class
+beauty show. (Lord send I may be far from the reach of his revolver when
+this reaches his eye.) He has that dash of vanity in his composition which
+I have found in all good Irishmen, and he prides himself far more on the
+execution his eyes have done amidst the Dutch girls than of the work his
+deadly rifle has wrought in the ranks of the Dutch mea Yet, if you want to
+know if Driscoll can shoot, just go to Burmah, where for ten years he held
+the position of captain in the Upper Burmah Volunteer Rifles. That was
+where I heard of him first, as the most deadly rifle and revolver shot in
+all the East.
+
+The Boers know him now as the prince of rifle shots and the king of scouts.
+He is standing in the wintry sunlight just in front of my tent as I am
+writing, one hand on the bridle of his horse, rapping out Dutch oaths with
+a strong Cork accent to a nigger who has not groomed his pet animal
+properly. The nigger is very meek, for past experience has told him that
+Irish blood is hot, and an Irishman's boot quick and heavy. He is a
+picturesque figure, this Celtic scout leader, just such a picture as Phil
+May could bring to life on a sheet of paper with a few strokes of his
+master hand. He is about eleven stone in weight, and, roughly, five feet
+eight, clean cut and strong, with a face which tells you he was born in
+Cork, and had knocked about a lot in tropic lands; eight-and-thirty if he
+is a day, though he swears at night around the camp fire that the pretty
+Dutch girls have guessed his age as twenty-seven. He wears a slouch hat,
+around which a green puggaree coils lovingly. In his right hand his rifle
+rests as if it felt at home there. His coat is worn and shabby, khaki in
+colour; riding pants of roughest yellow cords, patched in places
+unspeakable, leggings around his sinewy calves, and feet planted in neat
+boots make up the whole man. He is clean shaven except for a moustache,
+dark brown in colour, which sprouts from his upper lip.
+
+In his softer moments Driscoll tells us that it used to "cur-r-r-l" before
+he had the "faver" in Burmah, and on such occasions we assure him that it
+"cur-r-rls" even yet. It is more polite to agree with him than to cross
+him--and a lot safer. He is as full of anecdote as heaven is of angels, and
+I mean to use him in the sweet days of peace, unless some stay-at-home
+journalist niches him from me in the meantime. Driscoll and Davies are fast
+friends. The Englishman is not such a picturesque figure as the Irishman.
+Englishmen seldom are, somehow; but he is a man, a real white man, all
+over. He is rather a good-looking, well set-up young fellow, who always
+looks as if he had just had a bath; not a dude by any manner of means, but
+a fellow with a soft eye for a pretty ankle, and a hard fist for a foe--one
+of those quiet chaps a man always likes to find close beside him in a row.
+Driscoll almost weeps over him to me sometimes. "He's the devil's own at
+close quarters," says the Irishman. "Never want a better chum when it comes
+to bashing the enemy. If he could only shoot a bit 'straighther and talk a
+bit sweether to the colleens he'd be perfect." All the same, I have, and
+hold, my own opinion concerning the "talking." Many a smile which the
+gallant Celt appropriated to himself as we rode out of a conquered town
+seemed to me to belong of right to the rosy-faced Welsh lad on the
+off-side. To hear these two men chatter over a glass of hot rum in my tent
+at night one would think they had never faced danger. Yet never a day goes
+by but one or the other of them has to run the gauntlet of Boer rifles;
+whilst Jack Brabant, who is death on cigars or anything else that will emit
+smoke, and who curls up and says little, has been near death so often that
+it will be no stranger to him when it comes in all its finality.
+
+Driscoll was in Burmah when the news came of the first disaster to the
+Irish troops in South Africa. He threw up his business as lightly as a
+coquette throws up a midsummer lover, and started for the war. At Bombay he
+was stopped by a yard or two of red tape, and had to go back to Calcutta,
+where he used his Irish tongue to such purpose that he got a permit to
+leave India, and made his way to the scene of trouble. He first joined
+General Gatacre as orderly officer. Later he was attached to the Border
+Mounted Rifles as captain, and did splendid service at the battles of
+Dordrecht and Labuschagne's Nek In the latter place he was the first man to
+gallop into the Boer laager before the fight had ceased. Captain, then
+Lieutenant, Davies was as close to his side as a shadow to a serpent, and
+they only had fourteen men with them at the time. After this Driscoll,
+whose skill as a scout had been remarked on all sides, was ordered to form
+a body of fifty scouts to act as the very eyes of the rapidly moving
+Colonial Division under General Brabant. This was promptly done, most of
+the men picked being Colonial-born Britishers. Soon after the formation of
+his band, Driscoll, with fifty men, attacked Rouxville from four sides at
+once. Dashing in, he demanded surrender of the place, as if he had an army
+at his back to enforce his demands, a piece of Irish impudent valour that
+would have cost every man amongst the little band his life had the Boers
+known that he was unbacked. But they did not know it, and consequently
+surrendered, and he hoisted the British flag and disarmed the residents--a
+really brilliant piece of work, for which Driscoll's Scouts have up to date
+received no public credit.
+
+The Scout and his men took a warm part in the, very warm fight at Wepener,
+where many a good Briton fell. He had lost a good few fellows in the many
+fights, but Driscoll's name soon charmed others to his little band. At
+Jammersberg Drift the Scouts were so badly mauled that over a fourth of
+their number were counted out, but the places of the fallen men were soon
+filled, and to-day the number is almost complete. Driscoll has one
+especially good quality. He never speaks slightingly of his enemy unless he
+well deserves it. Few men have had so many hand-to-hand encounters with the
+burghers as he has; few men have held their lives by virtue of their steady
+hand on a rifle as frequently as this wild, good-natured, merry Irishman
+has done. Yet of the Boer as a fighter he speaks most highly. "He don't
+like cold steel, and shmall blame to'm," says Driscoll, "but for the clever
+tactics he's a devil of a chap, 'nd the men who run him down are mostly the
+men who run away from him. They're not all heroes, any more than all women
+are angels. Some of 'em are fit only for a dog's death, but most of 'em are
+good men; and if I wasn't an Irishman I wouldn't mind being a Boer, for
+they've no call to hang their heads and blush when this war is over."
+
+I asked him if he had ever of his own knowledge come into contact with
+anything savouring of white flag treachery. "Once I did," said the great
+scout, and for a while his eyes were filled with a sombre fire which spoke
+of the volcano under the genial human crust. "Onct," and he lapsed into the
+brogue as he spoke; "only onct, and there's a debt owin' on it yet which
+has got to be paid. It was at Karronna Ridge. I was out wid me scouts, 'nd
+I saw a farmhouse flying the white flag--a great flag it was, too, as big
+as a bed sheet. I'm not sure that it was not wan, too. I rode towards it,
+thinking the people wanted to surrender, and sent two of me men, two young
+lads they were--good boys, eager for duty. I sent 'em forward to ask what
+was the matther inside; and when they got within fifteen paces of the house
+the Boers inside opened fire from twenty rifles, and blew 'em out of the
+saddle. I had to ride with me little troop for dear life then, for the
+rocks all around us were alive with rifles. That house still stands; but if
+Driscoll's name is Driscoll it's going to burn, and the cur who flew the
+white flag in it, if I can get him, for the sake of the dead boys out on
+the veldt there. That's the only dirty trick I knew them play, and they
+must have been a lot of wasters, not like the general run of their
+fighters."
+
+Three nights ago Driscoll, Davies, Brabant, and twenty men camped in a
+farmhouse a long way from the British lines, for these men scour the
+country for many miles in all directions. The night was cold and rough, a
+bleak wind whistling amidst the kopjes half a mile away. Just as the scouts
+were sitting down to supper, the farmer's wife rushed in, and said to
+Driscoll, in a voice between a sob and a scream, "Do you know, sir, that
+our burghers are in the kopjes, and are watching the farm?" and as she
+spoke she wrung her hands wildly. The Irish scout rose from the table and
+bowed, as only an Irish scout can bow, for the "vrow" was about thirty
+years of age, and pleasing to the eye beyond the lot of most women. "I am
+awfully glad to hear it, madam," he said in his execrable Dutch. "I've been
+looking for that commando for a week past. As they have doubtless sent a
+message by you, please send this back for me. Tell their officers, if they
+will accept an offer to come and dine with Driscoll's Scouts here to-night,
+they shall be made welcome to the best we have in the way of kindness. For
+it must be cold waiting outside in the wind. Tell them they shall go as
+they come, unmolested and unwatched, and in the morning we'll come out and
+give 'em all the fight they want in this world." Then, sweeping the floor
+with a graceful wave of his green puggareed soft slouch hat, Driscoll bowed
+the astonished dame out of the dining-room, whilst his officers and men
+nearly choked themselves with their hot soup, as they noticed him
+surreptitiously drawing a pocket mirror from his breeches pocket. For well
+they knew that the dare-devil leader was thinking far more of the effect
+his looks had had on the Dutch housewife than of the effect of his message
+on the enemy. Yet, at the first promise of dawn, he unrolled himself from
+his blanket on the hard floor, and was the foremost man to show in the
+open, where the enemy's rifles might reach him. But no rifles sounded, for
+the Boers had declined the invitation both to supper and breakfast.
+
+
+
+
+
+                         HUNTING AND HUNTED.
+
+                                                       ORANGE RIVER COLONY.
+
+
+There is a funny side to pretty nearly every kind of tragedy if one only
+has the humorous edge of his nature sufficiently well developed to see it.
+Not that the humour is always apparent at the time--that comes later. I am
+led to these reflections as I watch Lieutenant "Jack" Brabant, of the
+Scouts, dancing a wild war dance round our little camp fire. He is a
+picturesque figure in the firelight, this thirty-year-old son of the
+renowned General Brabant, ten stone weight I should say, all whipcord and
+fencing wire, rather a hard-faced man; no feather-bed frontiersman this,
+but a tough, hard-grained bit of humanity, who has fought niggers and
+hunted for big game at an age when most young fellows are thinking more of
+poetry and pretty faces than of hard knocks and harder sport. I know him
+for a rattling good shot at either man or beast, a fine bushman, and a
+dandy horseman. He is a rather quiet fellow, as a rule, but all the
+quietness is out of him to-night, and he only wants to be stripped of his
+tight yellow jacket, cord breeches, leather gaiters, soft slouch hat with
+green puggaree, and then, given a coat of black paint, he would pass well
+for some warrior chief doing a death dance in the smoke. He is boiling with
+passion, his left fist, clenched hard as the head of an axe, moves up and
+down, in and out, like the legs of a kicking mule midst a crowd of
+cart-horses. In his right he swings his Mauser carbine, and a man don't
+need to be a descendant of a race of prophets to know that something has
+gone gravely wrong with the lieutenant, otherwise he would not be making a
+circus of himself in this fantastic fashion.
+
+I lay my pencil aside for a minute or two to catch what he is saying, and
+when I have got the hang of the story I don't wonder he feels as mad as a
+wooden-legged man on a wet mud-bank. He had been out all day since the very
+break of dawn with a couple of scouts, searching the kopjes for a notorious
+Boer spy, whose cleverness and audacity had made him a thorn in our side.
+If there was a man in the British lines capable of running the "slim" Boer
+to earth, that man was Lieutenant Jack Brabant. It had been a grim hunt,
+for the spy was worthy of his reputation, and the pursuers had to move with
+their fingers on their triggers, and a rash move would have meant death.
+All the forenoon he dodged them, in and out of the kopjes, along the
+sluits, up and down the dongas; sometimes they pelted him at long range
+with flying bullets, sometimes he sent them a reminder of the same sort.
+And so the day wore on; but at last, towards evening, they fixed him so
+that he had to make a dash out across the veldt. He was splendidly mounted,
+and when the time came for a dash he did not waste any time making poetry.
+Neither did Brabant and his two men; they galloped at full speed after the
+fleetly flying figure, and when they saw that a broad and deep donga ran
+right across his track, cutting him off from the long line of kopjes for
+which he was making, they counted him as theirs. He only had one chance, to
+gallop into the donga, jump out of the saddle and fire at them as they
+closed in on him; and, as they rode far apart, it was a million to one on
+missing in his hurry in the fading light. But the gods had decided
+otherwise, for the whiplike crack of rifles suddenly cut the air, and the
+bullets fell so thick around the pursuers that the three men could almost
+breathe lead. Half a mile away, on the far side of the donga, appeared a
+squad of Yeomanry, blazing away like veritable seraphs at Brabant and his
+men, whilst they let the flying Boer go free. Brabant whipped out his
+handkerchief, and waved it frantically; but the lead only whistled the
+faster, and he had only one chance for his life, and that was to wheel and
+ride at full speed for the nearest cover, where he and his men hid until
+the Yeomen rode up. Then Brabant hailed them, and asked them what the devil
+they meant by trying to blow him and his men out of the saddle.
+
+There was a pause in the ranks of the Yeomen, then a voice lisped through
+the gathering gloom, "Are you fellahs British?"
+
+"Yes, d--n you; did you think we were springbok?"
+
+"No, by Jove, but we thought you were beastly Booahs. Awfully sorry if
+we've caused you any inconvenience. What were you chasing the other fellah
+foah, eh?"
+
+"Oh!" howled the disgusted backwoodsman with a snort of wrath, "we only
+wanted to know if he'd cut his eye tooth yet."
+
+"Bah Jove," quoth the Yeoman, "you fellahs are awfully sporting, don't yer
+know."
+
+"Yes," snarled the angry South African, "and the next time you Johnnies
+mistake me for a Booah and plug at me, I'll just take cover and send you
+back a bit of lead to teach you to look before you tighten your finger on a
+trigger."
+
+Talking of the Yeomen brings back a good yarn that is going round the camps
+at their expense. They are notorious for two things--their pluck and their
+awful bad bushcraft. They would ride up to the mouth of a foeman's guns
+coolly and gamely enough, but they can't find their way home on the veldt
+after dark to save their souls, and so fall into Boer traps with a
+regularity that is becoming monotonous. Recently a British officer who had
+business in a Boer laager asked a commander why they set the Yeomen free
+when they made them prisoners. "Oh!" quoth the Boer, with a merry twinkle
+in his eye, "those poor Yeomen of yours, we can always capture them when we
+want them." This is not a good story to tell if you want an _encore_,
+if you happen to be sitting round a Yeoman table or camp fire.
+
+But it is time I got back to the subject which lay in my mind when I sat
+down to write this epistle. The lieutenant's war dance took me off the
+track for a while, but I thought his story would come in nicely under the
+heading of "Hunting and Hunted." Camp life gets dull at times, so does camp
+food, the eternal round of fried flour cakes and mutton makes a man long
+for something which will remind him that he has still a palate, so when one
+of the scouts came in and told me that he had seen three herds of
+vildebeestes, numbering over a hundred each, and dozens of little mobs of
+springbok and blesbok, within ten miles of camp, away towards Doornberg, I
+made up my mind to ride out next day, and have a shot for luck. My friend
+Driscoll, captain of the Scouts, rammed a lot of sage advice into me
+concerning Boers known to be in force at Doornberg. I assured him that I
+had no intention of allowing myself to drift within range of any of the
+veldtsmen, so taking a sporting Martini I mounted my horse and set forth,
+intending to have a real good time among the "buck." At a Kaffir kraal I
+picked up a half-caste "boy," who assured me that he knew just where to
+pick up the "spoor" of the vildebeeste, and he was as good as his boast,
+for within a couple of hours he brought me within sight of a mob of about
+fifty of the animals, calmly grazing. I worked my way towards them as well
+as I could, leaving the "boy" to hold my horse; but, though I was careful
+according to my lights, I was not sufficiently good as a veldtsman to get
+within shooting distance before they saw me or scented me. Suddenly I saw a
+fine-looking fellow, about as big as a year-and-a-half-old steer, trot out
+from the herd. He came about twenty yards in my direction, and I had a
+grand chance to watch him through my strong military glasses. He looked for
+all the world like a miniature buffalo bull, the same ungainly head and
+fore-quarters, big, heavy shoulders, neat legs, shapely barrel, light loin,
+and hindquarters, the same proppy, ungainly gait. I unslung my rifle to
+have a shot at him, when he wheeled and blundered back to the herd, and the
+lot streamed off at a pace which the best hunter in England would have
+found trying, in spite of the clumsiness of their movements. The half-caste
+grinned as he came towards me with the horses, grinned with such a glorious
+breadth of mouth that I could see far enough down his black and tan throat
+to tell pretty well what he had for breakfast. This annoyed me. I like an
+open countenance in a servant, but I detest a mouth that looks like a mere
+burial ground for cold chicken. We rode on for a mile or two, and then saw
+a pretty little herd of springbok about eighteen hundred yards away on the
+left. Slipping down into a donga, I left the horse and crawled forward,
+getting within nice, easy range. I dropped one of the pretty little
+beauties. I tried a flying shot at the others as they raced away like magic
+things through the grass, which climbed half-way up their flanks, but it
+was lead wasted that time.
+
+My coffee-coloured retainer gathered up the spoil, and paid me a compliment
+concerning my shooting, though well I knew he had sized me up as a
+"wastrel" with a rifle, for his shy eyes gave the lie to his oily tongue.
+We hunted round for awhile, and then from the top of a little kopje I saw a
+beautiful herd of vildebeestes one hundred and sixteen in number, lumbering
+slowly towards where we stood. The wind blew straight from them towards us,
+so that I had no fear on the score of scent. Climbing swiftly down until
+almost level with the veldt, I lay cosily coiled up behind a rock, and
+waited for the quarry. They came at last, Indian file, about a yard and a
+half separating one from the other, not a hundred and twenty yards from
+where I lay. I had plenty of time to pick and choose, and plenty of time to
+take aim, so did not hurry myself. Sighting for a spot just behind the
+shoulder, I sent a bit of lead fair through a fine beast, and expected to
+see him drop, but he did nothing of the kind. For one brief second the
+animal stood as if paralysed; then, with a leap and a lurch, he dashed on
+with his fellows. I fired again, straight into the shoulder this time, and
+brought him down; but he took a third bullet before he cried
+_peccavi_. I had a good time for pretty near the whole of that day,
+and was lamenting that I had not brought a Cape cart and pair of horses
+with me to bring home the spoil, when, happening to look into the face of
+my brown guide, I saw that his complexion had turned the colour of blighted
+sandalwood. He did not speak, but swift as thought ripped out his knife,
+and cut the thongs which bound the springbok and other trophies of the
+day's sport to his saddle, letting everything fall in an undignified heap
+on to the veldt. Then, without a word of farewell, or any other kind of
+word for that matter, he drove his one spur into the flank of his wretched
+nag, and fled round the bend of a kopje, which, thank Providence, was close
+handy, and as he went I saw something splash against a rock a dozen yards
+behind him. I had glanced hurriedly over the veldt the moment I caught that
+queer expression on the saffron face of my assistant, but as far as the eye
+could reach I could see nothing. Now, however, looking backwards, I saw
+three or four men riding out of a donga two thousand five hundred yards
+away.
+
+Twenty-five seconds later I had caught and passed my fleeing servant, who
+was heading for some kopjes, which lay right in front, about a mile and a
+half away. As I passed him he yelled, "Booers, baas, Booers! Ride hard,
+baas, ride hard; there are three hundred in the donga." When I heard that
+item of news I just sat down and attended strictly to business, and I am
+free to wager that never since the day he was foaled had that horse covered
+so much ground in so short a space of time as he did by the time he reached
+the kopjes. My servant had adroitly dodged into a sluit which hid him from
+view, and I knew that he could work his way out far better than I could.
+Besides, if they captured him, the worst he would get would be a cut across
+the neck with a sjambok for acting as hunting-guide to a detested
+Rooitbaaitje; whilst as for me, they would in all probability discredit my
+tale concerning the hunting trip, and give me a free, but rapid, pass to
+that land which we all hope to see eventually, but none of us are anxious
+to start for; because a correspondent has no right to carry a rifle during
+war time, a thing I never do unless I am out hunting. I gave my tired horse
+a spell, whilst I searched the veldt with my glasses, then slipping through
+a gully I made my way out on to the veldt, got in touch with a donga that
+ran the way I wanted to travel, got into its bed, gave my horse a drink,
+and rode on until dark; then I made my way into camp, and religiously held
+my peace concerning the doings of that day, because I did not want the life
+chaffed out of me. A few days later I happened to call at the Colonial
+camp, and was asked to dine by one of the officers.
+
+"Like venison?" he asked cheerily.
+
+"Yes, when it comes my way," I replied.
+
+"Got some to-day," he said. "It's nicely hung, too; not fresh from the
+gun."
+
+"Shoot it yourself, eh?"
+
+"Well, no, not exactly; was out on patrol on Monday, and saw a couple of
+lousy Dutchmen. They didn't think we were round, so were enjoying
+themselves shooting buck. We nearly got one of 'em with a long shot."
+
+"Didn't they show fight?" I asked innocently.
+
+"Fight?" he said, with scorn unutterable in his accent. "Not a bit of it.
+They dropped their game, and cleared as if a thousand devils were after
+them. I never saw men ride so fast."
+
+"Positive they were Dutchmen?" I ventured.
+
+"Yes," he laughed; "why, I'd know one of those ugly devils five miles off."
+
+That settled me, and I said no more.
+
+
+
+
+
+                            WITH THE BASUTOS.
+
+
+When the Eighth Division was skirting the borders of Basutoland I thought
+it would not be a waste of time to cross the border, and if possible
+interview one of the chiefs. My opportunity came at last. Our general
+decided to give his weary men a few days' rest, so getting into the saddle
+at Willow Grange I rode to Ficksburg, and there crossed the River Caledon,
+whose yellow waters, like an orange ribbon, divide Basutoland from the Free
+State. At this point the river runs between steep banks, and when I crossed
+it was about deep enough to kiss my horse's girths, though I could well
+believe that in the flood season it becomes a most formidable torrent. An
+artificial cutting has been made on both sides to facilitate the passage of
+traders, black and white, but even there the ford is so constituted that
+the Boers on the one side and the blacks on the other could successfully
+dispute the passage of an invading army with a mere handful of men.
+
+Once across the river one soon felt the influence of Jonathan, the "black
+prince." The niggers, naked except for the loin cloth, swaggered along with
+arms in their hands, and grinned with insolent familiarity into our faces.
+They may have an intense respect and an unbounded love for the British--I
+have read scores of times that they have--but I beg leave to doubt it.
+Physically speaking they are a superb race of men, these sable subjects of
+our Queen. Their heads sit upon their necks with a bold, defiant poise,
+their throats are full, round, and muscular, their chests magnificent,
+broad and deep, tapering swiftly towards the waist. Their arms and legs are
+beautifully fashioned for strong, swift deeds. Strip an ordinary white man
+and put him amongst those black warriors, and he would look like a human
+clothes rack. They walk with a quick, springy step, and gave me the
+impression that they could march at the double for a week without tiring.
+But they are at their best on horseback. To see them barebacked dash down
+the side of a sheer cliff, plunge into the river, swim their horses over,
+and then climb the opposite bank when the face of the bank is like the face
+of a wall is a sight worth travelling far to see.
+
+There are many things in this world that I know nothing at all about, but I
+do know a horseman when I see him, for I was bred in a land where
+nine-tenths of the boys can ride. But nowhere have I seen a whole male
+population ride as these Basuto warriors ride, and the best use England can
+make of them is to turn them into mounted infantry. Give them six months'
+drill, and they will be fit to face any troops in Europe. I never saw them
+do any fighting, but they carry the fighting brand on every lineament--the
+bold, keen eye, the prominent cheek-bone, the hard-set mouth, the massive
+jaw, the quivering nostril, the swing and spring of every movement, all
+speak the fighting race.
+
+And their women; what of them? From the back of the head to the back of the
+heel you could place a lance shaft, so straight are they in their carriage.
+Their dress is a bunch of feathers and the third of a silk pocket
+handkerchief, with a copper ring around the ankle and another around the
+wrist. They do most of the daily toil, such as it is, though I know of no
+peasant population in any other part of the world who get a living as
+easily as these folk. The men allow the women to do most of the field
+labour, but when the grain is bagged the males place it in single bags
+across the back of a pony, and so take it to market. They walk beside the
+tiny little ponies and balance the grain slung crosswise on the animal's
+back, and when the grain has been sold or bartered they bound on to their
+ponies and career madly homewards, each one trying to outdo his neighbour
+in deeds of recklessness in the hope of winning favour in the eyes of the
+dusky maidens. They are mean in regard to money or gifts, and know the
+intrinsic value of things just as well as any pedlar in all England.
+Judging the "nigger" merely as a human being, irrespective of sentiment,
+colour, and so forth, I can only say that in my estimation he and his are
+far better off in every respect than the average white labourer and his
+family in England. These folk have plenty to eat, little to do, and are
+very jolly. They would be perfectly happy if they only had a sufficient
+number of rifles and a large enough supply of ammunition to enable them to
+drive every white man clean away from their borders.
+
+When I arrived at Jonathan's village that warrior was away with a band of
+his young men, so that I could not see him, though I saw his son at a
+wedding which was being held when I reached the scene. I was taken through
+rows of naked, grinning savages, of both sexes, to be introduced to the
+bride and bridegroom, whom I found to be a pair of mission converts. When I
+saw the pair the shock nearly shook my boots off. The bride, a full-blooded
+young negress, was dressed in a beautiful white satin dress, which fitted
+her as if it had been fired at her out of a gun. It would not meet in front
+by about three inches, and the bodice was laced up by narrow bands of red
+silk, like a foot-baller's jersey. In her short, woolly hair she had pinned
+a wreath of artificial orange blossoms, which looked like a diadem of snow
+on a mid-winter mudheap. Down her broad back there hung a great gauzy lace
+veil, big enough to make a fly-net for a cow camel in summer. It was not
+fixed on to her dress, nor to her wreath, but was tied on to two little
+kinky curls at each side of her head by bright green ribbons, after the
+fashion of a prize filly of the draught order at a country fair. Her hands
+were encased in a pair of white kid gloves, man's size, and a pretty big
+man at that, for she had a gentle little fist that would have scared John
+L. Sullivan in his palmiest days.
+
+When I was introduced to the newly shackled matron she put one of those
+gloved hands into mine with a simpering air of coyness that made me feel
+cold all over, for that hand in the kid glove reminded me of the day I took
+my first lesson from Laurence Foley, Australia's champion boxer, and he had
+an eight-ounce glove on (thank Heaven!) on that occasion. In her right hand
+the bride carried a fan of splendid ostrich feathers, with which she
+brushed the flies off the groom. It was vast enough to have brushed away a
+toy terrier, to say nothing of flies, but it looked a toy in that giant
+fist.
+
+The groom hung on to his bride's arm like a fly to a sugar-stick. He was a
+tall young man, dressed in a black frock coat, light trousers, braced up to
+show that he wore socks, shoes, white gloves, and a high-crowned hat. He
+carried his bride's white silk gingham in one hand, and an enormous bunch
+of flowers in the other. He tried to look meek, but only succeeded in
+looking sly, hypocritical, and awfully uncomfortable. At times he would
+look at his new spouse, and then a most unsaintly expression would cross
+his foxy face; he would push out his great thick lips until they threw a
+shadow all round him; open his dazzling white teeth and let his great
+blood-red tongue loll out until the chasm in his face looked like a rent in
+a black velvet gown with a Cardinal's red hat stuffed in the centre. He may
+have been full of saving grace--full up, and running over--but it was not
+the brand of Christianity that I should care to invest my money in. When he
+caught my gaze riveted upon him, he tried to look like a brand plucked from
+the burning; he rolled his great velvet-black eyes skyward, screwed up the
+sluit which ran across his face, and which he called a mouth, until it
+looked like a crumpled doormat, folded his hands meekly over his breast,
+and comported himself generally like a fraudulent advertisement for a
+London mission society.
+
+From him I glanced to his "Pa," who had given him away, and seemed mighty
+glad to get rid of him. "Pa" was dressed in pure black from head to
+heel--just the same old suit that he had worn when he struck this planet,
+only more of it. He was guiltless of anything and everything in the shape
+of dress except for a large ring of horn which he wore on top of his head.
+He did not carry any parasols, or fans, or geegaws of any kind in his great
+muscular fists. One hand grasped an iron-shod assegai, and the other
+lovingly fondled a battle-axe, and both weapons looked at home where they
+rested. He was not just the sort of father-in-law I should have hankered
+for if I had been out on a matrimonial venture; but I would rather have had
+one limb of that old heathen than the whole body of his "civilised" son,
+for with all his faults he looked a man. A chum of mine who knew the ways
+of these people had advised me to purchase a horn of snuff before being
+presented to the bride and groom, and I had acted accordingly.
+
+When the ceremony of introduction was over, and I had managed to turn my
+blushing face away from "Ma" and the bevy of damsels, as airily clothed as
+herself, I offered the snuff box to the happy pair. The groom took a tiny
+pinch and smiled sadly, as though committing some deadly sin. The bride,
+however, poured a little heap in the palm of her hand about as big as a
+hen's egg, regardless of her nice white kid gloves. This she proceeded to
+snuff up her capacious nostrils with savage delight, until the tears
+streamed down her cheeks like rain down a coal heap. Then she threw back
+her head, spread her hands out palm downwards, like a mammoth duck treading
+water, and sneezed. I never heard a human sneeze like that before; it was
+like the effort of a horse after a two-mile gallop through a dust storm.
+And each time she sneezed something connected with her wedding gear ripped
+or gave way, until I began to be afraid for her. But the wreck was not
+quite so awful as I had anticipated, and when she had done sneezing she
+laughed. All the crowd except the groom laughed, and the sound of their
+laughter was like the sound of the sea on a cliff-crowned coast.
+
+A little later one of the bridesmaids, whose toilet consisted of a dainty
+necklace of beads and a copper ring around one ankle, invited me to drink a
+draught of native beer. The beer was in a large calabash, and I felt
+constrained to drink some of it. These natives know how to make love, and
+they know how to make war, but, as my soul liveth, they don't know how to
+make beer. The stuff they gave me to drink was about as thick as
+boardinghouse cocoa; in colour it was like unto milk that a very dirty maid
+of all work had been stirring round in a soiled soup dish with an unwashed
+forefinger. It had neither body nor soul in it, and was as insipid as a
+policeman at a prayer meeting. Some of the niggers got gloriously merry on
+it, and sang songs and danced weird, unholy dances under its influence. But
+it did not appeal to me in that way, possibly I was not educated up to its
+niceties. All I know is that I became possessed of a strange yearning to
+get rid of what had been given me--and get rid of it early.
+
+The wedding joys were of a peculiar nature. Bride and bridegroom, linked
+arm in arm, marched up and down on a pad about twenty yards in length, a
+nude minstrel marched in front, and drew unearthly music from a kind of
+mouth organ. Girls squatting in the dust _en route_ clapped their
+hands and chanted a chorus. The groom hopped first on one leg and then on
+the other, and tried to look gorgeously happy; the bride kicked her satin
+skirts out behind, pranced along the track as gracefully as a lady camel in
+the mating season; behind the principal actors in the drama came a regiment
+of youths and girls, and the antics they cut were worthy of the occasion.
+Now and again some dusky Don Juan would dig his thumb into the ribs of a
+daughter of Ham. The lady would promptly squeal, and try to look coy. It is
+not easy to look coy when you have not got enough clothes on your whole
+body to make a patch to cover a black eye; but still they tried it, for the
+sex seem to me to be much alike on the inside, whether they dress in a coat
+of paint or a coat of sealskin.
+
+By-and-by the groom took his bride by the arm, and made an effort to induce
+her to leave her maids of honour and "trek" towards the cabin which
+henceforth was to be her home. The lady pouted, and shook his hand off her
+arm; whilst the maidens laughed and clapped their hands, dancing in the
+dust-strewn sunlight with such high kicking action as would win fame for
+any ballet dancer in Europe. The young men jeered the groom, and incited
+him to take charge of his own. He hung down his ebony head and looked
+sillily sullen, and the bride continued to "pout." Have you ever seen a
+savage nigger wench pout, my masters? Verily it is a sight worth travelling
+far to see. First of all she wraps her mouth in a simper, and her lips look
+like a fold in a badly doubled blanket. Then slowly, she draws the corners
+towards, the centre, just as the universe will be crumpled up on the Day of
+Judgment. It is a beautiful sight. The mouth, which, when she smiled,
+looked like a sword wound on the flank of a horse, now, when the "pout" is
+complete, looks like a crumpled concertina. The groom again timidly
+advanced his hand towards the satin-covered arm of his spouse, and the
+"pout" became more pronounced than ever. The white of one eye was slyly
+turned towards the bridesmaids, the other rolled with infinite subtlety in
+the direction of him who was to be her lord and master; and the "pout" grew
+larger and larger, until I was constrained to push my way amidst the maids
+to get a look behind the bride, for I fancied the back of her neck must
+surely have got somehow into the front of her face. When I got to the front
+again the "pout" was still growing, the rich red lips in their midnight
+setting looking like some giant rose in full bloom that an elephant's hoof
+had trodden upon. So the show proceeded. At last one of the bridesmaids
+stepped from amidst her sisters, and playfully pushed the bride in the
+direction of her home. Then the "pout" gave way to a smile, the white teeth
+gleaming in the gap like tombstones in a Highland churchyard. I had been a
+bit scared of her "pout," but when she smiled I looked round anxiously for
+my horse. After a little manoeuvring, the blissful pair marched cabinwards,
+with the whole group of naked men and maids circling round them, stamping
+their bare feet, kicking up clouds of dust like a mob of travelling cattle.
+The men yelled some barbarous melody, flourished their arms, smote upon
+their breasts, and anon gripping a damsel by the waist circled afar like
+goats on a green grass hill slope. The maids twisted and turned in
+fantastic figures, swaying their nobly fashioned bodies hither and thither,
+whilst they kept up a continuous wailing, sing-song cry. So they passed
+from my sight into the regions of the honeymoon, and the clubbings and
+general hidings which follow it.
+
+I only stayed a few days amongst these savages, but, short as my stay was,
+I arrived at the conclusion that the sooner they are disarmed the better.
+There are hundreds of white women living upon isolated farms within easy
+riding distance of the Basuto villages, and as we are disarming the
+husbands and brothers of these women it is our solemn duty to see that the
+savage warriors have not the means within their reach to injure or outrage
+those whom we have left practically defenceless. It is true that these
+women are the wives, daughters, and sisters of our enemy, but surely in all
+England there does not breathe a man so poor in spirit as to wish to place
+them at the mercy of a horde of barbarians. Ours is a grave responsibility
+in regard to this matter. Just at present the native warriors are quiet in
+their kraals, but a day will surely dawn when the younger and more
+turbulent fighting men will lust for the excitement of war. They look upon
+the Boer farmers who dwell near their borders as so many interlopers, whose
+title deeds were signed by the rifle, and they long for the time to come
+when they can sweep them backwards with the strong arm. They never speak of
+the land close to their border as the Free State. They call it with deadly
+significance the "conquered territory," and the idea of reconquest is
+strong in their minds. Of old time the Boer farmers stood ever ready to
+defend what they had conquered with the rifle, and the nigger had learned
+to dread the Dutch rifle as he dreads few things in this world. To-day he
+knows that the Boer is helpless, and is unsparing in his insolence to his
+old-time foe. Later on friction between the white man and the black is
+certain to ensue, and if he has the upper hand the black man will not stop
+at mere insolence.
+
+I don't know how the Imperial Parliament may feel about it, but I do know
+that if there is wrong done the Boers by the blacks, the South African
+farmers of British blood will rise like one man to defend the men and women
+of their own colour. They will never permit the black man to dominate the
+white, and that will cause friction between the Colonists and the Imperial
+Government. There is more in this than may meet the eye at the first
+glance, for if the Colonists rise to battle with the blacks the Imperial
+troops will have to assist them whether the Government of the day likes or
+dislikes it, or else we shall see the Colonists of our own blood clamouring
+for the withdrawal of British rule in South Africa, and we shall hear again
+the cry for a South African Republic. Not a "Dutch" South African Republic
+next time, but a blended nationality, and Colonial Britons and Colonial
+Dutchmen will be found fighting side by side under one flag, for one common
+cause.
+
+Surely, if it is not wise to allow the whites to carry arms, it is not wise
+or right to allow sixty thousand fierce fighting men to remain fully
+equipped and mounted. To me it seems that now, whilst we have two hundred
+and fifty thousand fighting men in Africa to overawe and intimidate the
+warriors, we should take from them, by force if necessary, everything in
+the shape of warlike weapons. White men are not permitted in any of our
+Colonies to ride or strut about the country armed to the teeth. Therefore,
+I ask, why should these negroes be privileged to do what Australians or
+Canadians are forbidden to do? They have no valid excuse for being in
+possession of weapons of war. They have now no enemies capable of attacking
+them upon their borders. There is no animal life of a savage or dangerous
+character near them, and their armament is a menace to the public safety.
+If their young men will not settle down to the peaceful calling of
+husbandmen, tillers of the soil, and breeders of stock, let them be drafted
+into our Army for service abroad. If there is not enough for the more
+elderly men to do in the farming line, let them turn their energies towards
+the development of the diamond mines and gold mines that lie within their
+borders--mines which at present they will not work themselves nor allow any
+white man to work.
+
+I have spent a good many years of my life exploring new mineral territory,
+and have seen much of the best auriferous country known to modern times;
+but that Basuto country, presided over and held by a mere gang of black
+barbarians, ought, in my estimation, to be one of the richest gems in the
+British diadem. That good payable gold-bearing rock exists there I know
+beyond question. I also know beyond all doubt that diamonds are to be
+easily won from the soil, and I am thoroughly cognisant of the fact that at
+least one, and I believe many, quicksilver mines can be located there.
+Others who know the country well have told me of coal and tin and silver
+mines, and samples have been shown to me which made my mouth water. Yet,
+all this wealth, which nature's generous hand has scattered so liberally
+for the use of mankind, is jealously locked away year by year by men who,
+in their savage state, have no use for it themselves, yet will not, upon
+any consideration whatever, grant a mining concession to a white man, no
+matter what that white man's nationality may be. Verily, the heathen badly
+want educating, and we have now 250,000 of the right kind of schoolmasters
+within handy reach of them.
+
+
+
+
+
+                       MAGERSFONTEIN AVENGED.
+
+                                                                THABA NCHU.
+
+
+When, a few months ago, I stood upon the veldt almost within the shadow of
+the frowning brow of Magersfontein's surly heights, and looked upon the
+cold, stern faces of Scotland's dead, and listened to the weird wailing of
+the bagpipes, whilst Cronje gazed triumphantly down from his inaccessible
+mountain stronghold upon his handiwork, I knew in my soul that a day would
+dawn when Scotland would demand an eye for an eye, blood for blood. I read
+it written on the faces of the men who strode with martial tread around the
+last sad resting-place Of him they loved--their chief, the dauntless
+General Wauchope. Vengeance spoke in the sombre fire that blazed in every
+Scotsman's eye. Retribution was carved large and deep on every hard-set
+Scottish face; it spoke in silent eloquence in the grip of each hard,
+browned hand on rifle barrels; it found a mute echo in each knitted brow,
+and leapt to life in every deep-drawn breath; it sparkled in each tear that
+rolled unheeded and unchecked down war-scarred cheeks, and thundered in the
+echo of the men's tread across the veldt, right up to Cronje's lines, as
+they marched campwards. The Highland Brigade had gazed upon its dead; and
+neither time, nor change, nor thought of home, or wife, or lisping babe,
+would wipe the memory of that sight away until the bayonet's ruthless
+thrust gave Scotland quittance in the rich, red blood of those who did that
+deed.
+
+That hour has come. The men who sleep in soldiers' graves beside the
+willow-clad banks of the Modder River have been avenged. Or, if the debt
+has not been paid in full, the interest owing on that bond of blood has at
+least now been handed in. It was not paid by our Colonial sons; not from
+Australian or Canadian hands did the stubborn Boers receive the debt we
+owed. They were not Irish hearts that cleared old Scotland's legacy of hate
+on that May Day amidst the African hills; it was not England's yeoman sons
+who did that deed. But men whose feet were native to the heather, men on
+whose tongues the Scottish burr clung lovingly--the bare-legged kilted
+"boys" whom the lasses in the Highlands love, the gallant Gordons.
+
+Let the tale be told in Edinburgh Town; let it ring along the Border; let
+the lass, as she braids the widow's hair, whisper the story with
+love-kissed breath; let the lads, as they come from their daily toil, throw
+out their chests for the sake of their breeding; let the pessimist turn up
+the faded page of history, written when the world was young, and find, if
+he can, a grander deed done by the sons of men since the morning stars sang
+together.
+
+So to my tale. It was the 1st of May. We had the Boers hard pressed in
+Thaba Nchu in a run of kopjes that reached in almost unbroken sequence
+farther than a man's eye might reach. The flying French was with us,
+chafing like a leashed greyhound because he could not sweep all before him
+with one impetuous rush. Rundle, too, was here, with his haughty, handsome
+face, as keen as French, but with a better grip on his feelings. Six
+thousand of the foe, under Louis Botha, cool, crafty, long-headed,
+resourceful, have held the kopjes. Again and again we manoeuvred to trap
+them, but no wolf in winter is more wary than Botha, no weasels more
+watchful than the men he commanded. When we advanced they fell back, when
+we fell back they advanced, until the merest tyro in the art of war could
+see that a frontal attack, unless made in almost hopeless positions, was
+impossible. So Hamilton swept round their right flank, ten miles north of
+Thaba Nchu, and gave them a taste of his skill and daring, whilst Rundle
+held their main body here at Thaba Nchu. Rundle made a feint on their
+centre in strong force, and they closed in from both flanks to resist him.
+Then he drew off, as if fearing the issue. This drew the Boers in, and they
+pounded our camp with shells until one wondered whether the German-made
+rubbish they used would last them much longer. Then we threatened their
+left flank quickly and sharply, giving Hamilton time to strike on their
+right; and he struck without erring, whipping the enemy at every point he
+touched, driving them out of their positions, and holding them firmly
+himself, so threatening their rear and the immense herds of sheep and oxen
+they have with them, making a footing for the British to move on and cut
+Botha off from his base at Kroonstad.
+
+Whether he will now stand his ground and fight or make a break for the main
+army of the Boers is hard to calculate, for the Boer generally does just
+what no one expects he will attempt to do. It was during Hamilton's
+flanking effort that the Gordons vindicated their character for courage.
+Captain Towse, a brave, courteous soldier and gentleman, whom I had had the
+pleasure of meeting at Graspan, and whose guest I had been on several
+occasions, was the hero of the hour. He is a fine figure of a man, well set
+up, good-looking, strong, active. He was, I think, about the only soldier I
+have seen who could wear an eye-glass and not lose by it. In age he looked
+about forty. I remember snapping a "photo" of him as he was "tidying up"
+the grave of gallant young Huddart, an Australian "middy," who lay buried
+on the veldt; but the Boers collected that portrait from me later on, worse
+luck. On this fateful day Captain Towse, with about fifty of the Gordons,
+got isolated from the main body of British troops, and the Boers, with that
+marvellous dexterity for which they are fast becoming famous, sized up the
+position, and determined upon a capture. They little dreamt of the nature
+of the lion they had snared in their toils. With fully two hundred and
+fifty men they closed in on the little band of kilted men, and in
+triumphant tones called upon them to throw down their arms and surrender.
+It was a picture to warm an artist's heart. On all sides rose the bleak,
+black kopjes, ridge on ridge, as inhospitable as a watch-dog's growl. On
+one hand the little band of Highlanders, the picturesque colours of their
+clan showing in kilt and stocking, perfect in all their appointments, but
+nowhere so absolutely flawless as in their leadership. Under such leaders
+as he who held them there so calm and steady their forbears had hurled back
+the chivalry of France, and had tamed the Muscovite pride, and they were
+soon to prove themselves men worthy of their captain.
+
+On the other side rose the superior numbers of the Boers. A wild and motley
+crew they looked compared with the gem of Britain's army. Boys stood side
+by side with old men, lads braced themselves shoulder to shoulder with men
+in their manhood's prime, ragged beards fell on still more ragged shirt
+fronts. But there were manly hearts behind those ragged garments, hearts
+that beat high with love of home and country, hearts that seldom quailed in
+the hour of peril. Their rifles lay in hands steady and strong. The Boer
+was face to face with the Briton; the numbers lay on the side of the Boer,
+but the bayonet was with the Briton.
+
+"Throw up your hands and surrender." The language was English, but the
+accent was Dutch; a moment, an awful second of time, the rifle barrels
+gleamed coldly towards that little group of men, who stood their ground as
+pine trees stand on their mountain sides in bonny Scotland. Then out on the
+African air there rang a voice, proud, clear, and high as clarion note:
+"Fix bayonets, Gordons!" Like lightning the strong hands gripped the ready
+steel; the bayonets went home to the barrel as the lips of lover to lover.
+Rifles spoke from the Boer lines, and men reeled a pace from the British
+and fell, and lay where they fell. Again that voice with the Scottish burr
+on every note: "Charge, Gordons! Charge!" and the dauntless Scotchman
+rushed on at the head of his fiery few. The Boer's heart is a brave heart,
+and he who calls them cowards lies; but never before had they faced so grim
+a charge, never before had they seen a torrent of steel advancing on their
+lines in front of a tornado of flesh and blood. On rushed the Scots, on
+over fallen comrades, on over rocks and clefts, on to the ranks of the foe,
+and onward through them, sweeping them down as I have seen wild horses
+sweep through a field of ripening corn. The bayonets hissed as they crashed
+through breastbone and backbone. Vainly the Boer clubbed his rifle and
+smote back. As well might the wild goat strike with puny hoofs when the
+tiger springs. Nothing could stay the fury of that desperate rush. Do you
+sneer at the Boers? Then sneer at half the armies of Europe, for never yet
+have Scotland's sons been driven back when once they reached a foe to
+smite.
+
+How do they charge, these bare-legged sons of Scotia? Go ask the hills of
+Afghanistan, and if there be tongues within them they will tell you that
+they sweep like hosts from hell. Ask in sneering Paris, and the red records
+of Waterloo will give you answer. Ask in St. Petersburg, and from
+Sebastopol your answer will come. They thought of the dreary morning hours
+of Magersfontein, and they smote the steel downwards through the neck into
+the liver. They thought of the row of comrades in the graves beside the
+Modder, and they gave the Boers the "haymaker's lift," and tossed the dead
+body behind them. They thought of gallant Wauchope riddled with lead, and
+they sent the cold steel, with a horrible crash, through skull and brain,
+leaving the face a thing to make fiends shudder. They thought of Scotland,
+and they sent the wild slogan of their clan ringing along the line until
+the British troops, far off along the veldt, hearing it, turned to one
+another, saying: "God help the Boers this hour; our Jocks are into 'em with
+the bay'nit!"
+
+But when they turned to gather up those who had fallen, then they found
+that he whose lion soul had pointed them the crimson path to duty was to
+lead them no more. The noble heart that beat so true to honour's highest
+notes was not stilled, but a bullet missing the brain had closed his eyes
+for ever to God's sunlight, leaving him to go through life in darkness; and
+they mourned for him as they had mourned for noble, white-souled Wauchope,
+whose prototype he was. They knew that many a long, long year would roll
+away before their eyes would rest upon his like again in camp or bloody
+field. But it gladdened their stern warrior hearts to know that the last
+sight he ever gazed upon was Scotland sweeping on her foes.
+
+And when our noble Queen shall place upon his breast the cross which is the
+soldier's diadem, their hearts will throb in unison with his, for their
+strong hands on that May Day helped him to win what he is so fat to wear;
+and when our Sovereign honours him she honours them, and well they know it.
+And when the years have rolled away, and they are old and grey, and spent
+with wounds and toil, fit for nothing but to dandle little grand-babes on
+their knees, young men and maids will flock around, and pointing out the
+veteran to the curious stranger say, with honest pride, "He was with Towse
+the day he won the cross."
+
+
+
+
+
+                         THE CONDUCT OF THE WAR.
+
+                                                       ORANGE RIVER COLONY.
+
+
+There are hundreds of men lying in unmarked graves in African soil to-day
+who ought to be alive and well, others who have been done to death by the
+crass ignorance, the appalling stupidity, the damnable conceit which will
+brook no teaching. I have seen men die like dogs, men who left comfortable
+homes in the old land to go forth to uphold the power and prestige of our
+nation's flag. I have seen them gasping out their lives like stricken
+sheep, just in the springtide of their manhood, when the glory and the lust
+of life should have been strong upon them I have watched the Irish lad with
+the down upon his brave boyish face pass with the last deep-drawn quivering
+sob over the border line of life, into the shadows of the unsearchable
+beyond, a wasted sacrifice upon the grim altar of incapacity. I have seen
+the kilted Scottish laddie lie, with hollow cheeks and sunken eyes, waiting
+for the whisper of the wings of the Angel of Death. I have seen the death
+damp gather on his unlined brow, and watched the grey pallor creep upwards
+from throat to temple; until my very soul, wrung with anguish unutterable,
+has risen in hot revolt against the crimes of the incapable.
+
+I have knelt by England's fair-faced sons, the child of the cities, the boy
+from the fens, the youth from the farm, and watched the shadows creeping
+over eyes that mothers loved to look upon. I have seen the wasted fingers,
+grown clawlike, plucking aimlessly at the rude blankets as if weaving the
+woof of the winding-sheet, and have listened with aching heart to the
+aimless babbling of the dying, in which home and friends were blended,
+until the tired voice, grown aweary with the weight of utterance, died out
+like the crooning of a lisping child, as the soul slipped through the
+golden gateway that leads to the glory beyond the grave. I have watched
+them pile the earth above the last home of Cambria's sons, the gallant
+children of the old Welsh hills. I have seen them laid to sleep, as harvest
+hands will lay the sheaves in undulating rows when the summer shower has
+passed; and over every shallow grave I have sent a curse for those whose
+brutish folly caused the flower of Britain's army to wither in the pride of
+their peerless boyhood.
+
+For the men who fall in battle we can flush our tears with pride, and
+though our hearts may ache for those we love, yet is there an undercurrent
+of hot joy to know they fell as soldiers love to fall, face forward to the
+foe. But for those who die, as more than half of Britain's dead have died
+in this last war, stricken by pestilence brought about by ignorance and
+indolence, we have only sorrow and tears and prayers, blended with hate and
+contempt for the triple-dyed dandies and dunces who robbed us of those who
+should have been alive to-day to be the bulwark of the Empire, the pride of
+the nation, and the joy of many homes.
+
+Why did they die, these strong young soldiers of our Queen? Was it because
+their hearts failed them in the presence of hardship and danger? I tell
+you, No. The hardships of the campaign only roused them to greater
+exertions. Bravely and uncomplainingly they answered every call of duty,
+ready by night or day to go anywhere, or do anything, if only they were led
+by men worthy of our Queen's commission, worthy of the cloth they wore. Why
+did they die? Was it because of poisoned or polluted water, left in their
+path by the enemy whom they were fighting? Not so. No, not so. The Boers
+left no death-traps in our path. Why did they die? Was it because the
+country through which we marched lent itself climatically to the
+propagation and dissemination of fever germs? No, England, no! In all the
+world there is no finer climate than that in which our gallant soldiers
+died like rotting sheep. Wherever else the blame may lie, no truthful man
+can lay the blame of those untimely graves upon the climate or the country
+of our enemies.
+
+I will tell you why they died, and tell you in language so plain that a
+wayfaring man, even though a fool, cannot misunderstand me, for the time
+has arrived when the whole Empire should know the truth in all its native
+hideousness. Those men were done to death by wanton carelessness upon the
+part of men sent out by the British War Office. They were done to death
+through criminal neglect of the most simple laws of sanitation. Men were
+huddled together in camp after camp; they were allowed to turn the
+surrounding veldt and adjacent kopjes into cesspools and excreta camps. In
+some camps no latrines were dug, no supervision was exercised. The
+so-called Medical Staff looked on, and puffed their cigarettes and talked
+under their eye-glasses--the fools, the idle, empty-headed noodles. And
+whilst they smoked and talked twaddle, the grim, gaunt Shadow of Death
+chuckled in the watches of the night, thinking of the harvest that was to
+follow.
+
+Then the careless soldiers passed onward, leaving their camp vacant, and
+later came another batch of soldiers. Perhaps the men in charge would be
+men of higher mental calibre; they would order latrines to be dug, and all
+garbage to be burnt or buried. But by this time the germs of fever were in
+the air, the men would sicken and die, just as I have seen them sicken and
+die upon a score of mining fields away in the Australian bush; and all for
+the want of a little honest care and attention, all for the want of a few
+grains of good, wholesome, everyday common sense. Had proper care been
+taken in regard to these matters, four-fifths of those who now fill fever
+graves in South Africa would be with us, hale and hearty men, to-day.
+
+But, England, you must not complain. "Tommy" is a cheap article; he only
+costs a few pence per day, and if he dies there are plenty more ready and
+willing to take his place. Don't think of him as a human being. Don't think
+of him as some woman's husband and breadwinner. Don't think of him as some
+grey-haired widow's son, whose support he has been. Don't think of him as
+some foolish girl's heart's idol. But think of him as a part of the
+country's revenue. Think of him as "One-and-fourpence a day."
+
+What excuse can or will be made by the authorities for the wholesale murder
+of our men I know not. Possibly those high and haughty personages will
+sniff contemptuously and decline to give any explanation at all. And you,
+who hold the remedy in your own hands, what will you do? Will you at
+election times put a stern question to every candidate for the Commons, and
+demand a straight and unqualified answer to your questions. Remember this:
+You supply the men who do the fighting; the nation at a pinch can do
+without a Roberts, a Duller, or a Kitchener, but, as my soul liveth, it
+cannot do without "Tommy."
+
+If you want Army reform, you must commence with the "Press gang"; you must
+stand in one solid mass firmly behind those war correspondents who have not
+feared to speak out plainly. You must send men to the Commons pledged to
+stand behind them also, men who will not flinch and allow themselves to be
+flouted by every scion of some ancient house; for if you do not support the
+war correspondents of the great newspapers, how are you ever to know the
+real truth concerning the doings of our armies in the field? I tell you
+that you have not heard one-millionth part of the truth concerning this
+South African enterprise, and now you never will know the truth. Had the
+abominable practice of censorship been abolished prior to this war, most of
+the abuses which have made our Army the laughing stock of Europe would have
+been set right by the correspondents, for they would have pointed out the
+evils to the public through the medium of their journals, and an indignant
+people would have clamoured for reform in a voice which would brook no
+denial. As things are at present, the military people during the progress
+of the war have their heel upon the necks of the journalists, and the
+public are robbed of what is their just right, the right of knowledge of
+passing events; only that which suits the censor being allowed to filter
+over the wires. Had it been otherwise, hundreds of young widows in Ireland,
+Scotland, England, and Wales would be proud and happy wives to-day.
+
+But do not let me rouse your phlegmatic blood, my Britons; sit down, with
+your thumbs in your mouths, my masters, and allow a coterie to flout you at
+will, whilst the Frenchmen, the Germans, the Russians alternately laugh at
+and pity you. Pity you, the sons of the men who chased their fathers half
+over Europe at the point of the blood-red bayonet! Have you grown tame,
+have you waxed fat and foolish during these long years of peace? Is the
+spirit that swept the legions of France through the Pyrenees and carried
+the old flag up the heights of Inkerman in the teeth of Russian
+chivalry--is it dead, or only sleeping? If it but slumbers, let me cry,
+Sleeper, awake, for danger is at the gates! Not the danger due from foreign
+foes, but a greater danger--the danger of unjust government, for where evil
+is hidden injustice reigns.
+
+Our military friends tell us that censorship of Press work is necessary for
+the welfare of the Army. They urge that if we correspondents had a free
+hand the enemy might gain valuable information regarding the movements of
+our troops. To us who for the greater portion of a year have been at the
+front there is grim irony in that assertion. Fancy the Boer scouts wanting
+information from us which might filter through London newspapers! That
+flimsy, paltry excuse can be dismissed with a contemptuous laugh. That is
+not why the military people want our work censored. The real reason is that
+their awful blunders, their farcical mistakes, and their criminal
+negligence may not reach the British public. Just try for one brief moment
+to remember some of the "censored" cables that have been sent home to you
+during the war, and then compare it with such a cable as this, which would
+have come if the Press men had a free hand:
+
+                           "Kruger's Valley, Jan. 12.
+
+      "The ---- Division, under General ----, arrived at
+    Kruger's Valley four days ago. No latrines have been
+    dug ... weather terribly hot, with rain threatening.
+    This Division moves out in about a week. Its place will
+    be taken by troops just arrived at Durban from England.
+    Should we have rain in the meantime half the new draft
+    will be down with enteric fever before they are here a
+    week, and the death rate will be simply awful. General ----
+    and staff will be responsible for those deaths."
+
+The military folk would, doubtless, designate such a telegram "a piece of
+d----d impudence."
+
+But the latrines would be dug, the camp would be kept free from foulness,
+and the new draft would not die untimely deaths, but would live to fight
+the enemies of their country.
+
+Why the camps in South Africa were not models of cleanliness passes my
+comprehension. There was no need to harass "Tommy" by setting him to do the
+work. Every Division was accompanied by swarms of niggers, who drew from
+Government £4 10s. per month and their food. These niggers had a
+gentleman's life. They waxed fat, lazy, and cheeky. Four-fifths of them
+rode all day on transport wagons, and never earned a fourth of the wages
+they drew from a sweetly paternal Government. Why could not those men have
+been used in every camp to make things safe and comparatively comfortable
+for "Tommy," who had to march all day, with his fighting kit upon his back
+march and fight, and not only march and fight, but go on picket and sentry
+duty as well? Those niggers ought to have, been turned out to dig and fill
+in latrines for our soldiers, they ought to have been compelled to do all
+the menial work of the camps; but they never did anything of the sort
+"Tommy" was treated for the most part like a Kaffir dog, whilst the saucy
+niggers led the lives of fightingcocks, and to-day any ordinary Army
+Service nigger thinks himself a better man than "Tommy," and doesn't
+hesitate to tell you so. It would be instructive to know the name of the
+genius who fixed the scale of nigger wage at £ 4 10s. per month, with
+rations. Fully half that sum could with ease have been saved the British
+taxpayer, and the nigger would have taken it with delight, and jumped at
+the chance of getting it. As a matter of fact, the nigger has had a huge
+picnic, and has been well paid for attending it. He has never been kept
+short of food. He has never had to march until his feet were almost falling
+off him. He has not had to fight for the country that fed and clothed him.
+Poor "Tommy!"
+
+
+
+
+
+                                 HOME AGAIN.
+
+
+I stood where Nelson's Column stands--a stranger, and alone. Alone amidst a
+mighty multitude of men and maids. I saw a people drunk with joy. I looked
+from face to face, and in each flashing eye, and on each quivering lip, a
+nation's heart lay bared to all the world, for England's capital was but
+the throbbing pulse of England's Empire. Our nation spoke to the nations
+that dwell where the sea foam flies, and woe to them who do not heed the
+tale that the city told. There was no sun, the city lay enveloped in
+silvery shadows, like some grey lioness that knows her might and is not
+quickly stirred to wrath or joy, like meaner things. I looked above, and
+saw the monument of him whose peerless genius gave us empire on the seas. I
+looked below, and saw, far as my eyes could range, a seething mass of men,
+as good, as gallant, and as great of heart as those who fought and fell
+beneath his flag, and in my blood I felt the pride of empire stirring, and
+knew how great a thing it is to call one's self a Briton.
+
+I looked along that swaying mass of human flesh and blood, and saw the best
+that England owns waiting to welcome, with heart-stirring cheers, the
+gallant lads whose lion hearts had carried London's name and fame along the
+rough-hewn tracks of war. I saw the cream of Britain's chivalry and
+Britain's beauty there. Men and women from the countryside, from Ireland
+and from Scotland, all eager to pay tribute to the London lads who had so
+proudly proved to all the world that it was not for a soldier's pay, not
+for the love of gain, but for a nation's glory that they had risked limb
+and life beneath an African sun. Then, as I looked, I caught a distant hum
+of voices--a far-off sound, such as I have heard amid Pacific isles when
+wind and waves were beating upon coral crags, and foam-topped rollers
+thrashed the surf into the magic music of the storm-tossed sea. It was the
+roar of London's multitudes welcoming home her own; and what a sound it
+was! I have heard the music of the guns when our nation spoke in the stern
+tones of battle to a nation in arms; I have heard the crash of tempests on
+Southern coasts when ships were reeling in the breath of the blast, and
+souls to their God were going; I have crouched low in my saddle when the
+tornado has swept trees from the forest as a boy brushes flowers with his
+footsteps. But never had I heard a sound like that. It was the voice of
+millions, it was the great heart-beats of a mighty nation, it was a welcome
+and a warning--a welcome to the descendants of the 'prentice lads of Old
+London, a warning to the world. I caught the echoes in my hands, I hugged
+them to my heart, I let them pour into my brain, and this is the tale they
+told: "Sluggish we are, ye people, slow to wake, strong in the strength of
+conscious might. Jibe at us, jeer at us, flout us and threaten us; but
+beware the day we turn in our strength. We have sent forth a few of our
+children, but they were but as a drop in the ocean. All Britain sent two
+hundred and fifty thousand strong men to Africa; London, if need be, can
+send five hundred thousand more to the uttermost parts of the earth. Aye,
+and when they have died, as these would have died if need be, we can open
+our hearts and send five hundred thousand more, and yet be strong for our
+home fighting." It was a nation speaking to the nations, and that is the
+tale it told. Let the nations take heed and beware, for the language was
+the language of truth.
+
+I listened; and lo! through the storm of cheering, through the cries of
+women and the strong shouting of men in their prime, I caught another
+sound, a sound I knew and loved--the sound of marching men. Music hath
+charms to stir the blood and make men mad, but there is no music in all the
+earth like the trained tread of men who have marched to battle. I knew the
+rhythm of that tread; I knew that the "boys" of Old London were coming, and
+my nostrils seemed filled with the fumes of fighting. I looked again, and,
+saw them, hard faced, clean limbed, close set, as soldiers should be who
+have faced the storm and stress of war, as proud a band as Britain ever
+had, soldier and citizen both in one, fit to be a nation's bulwark and a
+nation's trust; and in the crowd around them there were a thousand thousand
+men as good, as game, as gritty, as they, for they were the children of the
+people, the men of the shop-counter, the men of the city office, the men of
+every artisan craft, the very vitals of London. They had sprung from the
+womb of the city, and the city could give birth to a million more if need
+be.
+
+I saw them pass amidst a storm of cheers, and I, who had seen them out on
+the African veldt under the foeman's guns, lifted up my voice to cheer them
+onward, for well I knew that there was nothing in the gift of England that
+they were not worthy of, those children of the "flat caps," those offspring
+of the 'prentice lads of London. I knew how they had starved; I knew how
+they had suffered through the freezing cold of the African winter; I knew
+how gallantly, how uncomplainingly, they had marched with empty bellies and
+aching limbs, ready to go anywhere, to do anything, ready to fight, and, if
+it were the will of the great God of Battles, ready to lay down their young
+lives and die. I knew those things, and, knowing them, gave them a cheer
+for the sake of Australia, for the sake of the kinship which binds us as no
+bonds of steel could bind us and them. I heard a voice at my knee
+whimpering, the voice of a gutter kid, who had dodged in there out of the
+way of the police. I looked at his ragged clothes, looked at his grimy
+face, looked at his hands, which looked as if they had never looked at
+soap, and I said: "What are you yelping for, kiddie?" And he, looking up at
+me through his tears, fired a voice at me through his sobs, and said: "I'm
+yelping, mister, because I'm only a little 'un, and can't see me mates come
+home from the war." Then I laughed, and tossing him up on my shoulder let
+him jamb his dirty fist on the only silk hat I possess, whilst he looked at
+his "mates" march home; for they were his mates--he was a child of London,
+and some day--who knows?--he may be a general.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Printed by
+Cassell & Company, Limited, La Belle Sauvage,
+London, E.C.
+10.101.
+
+
+
+***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CAMPAIGN PICTURES OF THE WAR IN
+SOUTH AFRICA (1899-1900)***
+
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