From Capetown to Ladysmith: An Unfinished Record of the South African War

E-THE DESERT OF THE KARROO-WAR AT LAST-A CAMPAIG

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sky. Only these last day's there has sprung up a little patch of white tents a quarter of a mile from the station, and about them move men in putties and khaki. Signal flags blink from the rises, pickets with fixed bayonets dot the ridges, mounted men in couples patrol t

ut it might just as well be a minute or a lifetime. It is a minute of experience prolonged to a lifetime. Sou

tween hills, making for a corner round one of the ranges. You feel that when you get round that corner you will at last see something: you arrive and only see another incline, two more ranges, and another corner-surely this time with something to arrive at beyond. You arrive and arrive, and once more you arrive-and once more you see the same vast nothing you are coming from. Believe it or not, that is the very charm of a desert-the unfenced emptiness, the space, the freedom, the unbroken arch of the sky. It is for ever fooling

ats love, there a dozen ostriches, high-stepping, supercilious heads in air, wheeling like a troop of cavalry and trotting out of the stink of that beastly train. Of men, nothing-only here at the bridge a couple of tents, there at the culvert a black man, grotesque in sombrero and patched trousers, loafing, hands in pocket

n and all the train and the very niggers on the dunghill outside knew it. War-war at last! Everybody had predicted it-and now

could put your fingers on: for this war I have been looking long enough, and have not found it. I have been accustomed to

hat is why Sir George White has abandoned Laing's Nek and Newcastle, and holds the line of the Biggarsberg: even so the Boers might conceivably get between him and his base. The same advantage we should possess on this western side of the theatre of war, except that we are so heavily outnumbered, and have adopted no heroic plan of abandoning the indefensible. We have an irregular force of mounted infantry at Mafeking, the Loyal North Lancashire Regiment at Kimberley, the Munster Fusiliers at De A

If the Army Corps were in Africa, which is still in England, this position would be a splendid one for it-three lines of supply from Capetown, Port Elizabeth, and East London, and three converging lines of advance by Norval's Pont, Bethulie, and Aliwal North. But with tiny forces of half a battalion in front and no support behind-nothing but long lines of railway with ungarrisoned ports hundreds of miles at the far end of them-it is very dangerous. Ther

In the mean time the good lady of the refreshment-room says: "Dinner? There's been twenty-one to-day and dinner got ready for fifteen; but you're welcome to it, such as it is. We must take things as they come in war-time." H