trouble or expense to make our visit enjoyable and I tried always to show 

 that I appreciated this fact and was heartily grateful for it. 



Most of the Karroo party went over into Natal, to join MoUengraf's 

 excursion, but I went directly, to Johannesburg, as I was unutterably 

 weary of the train and yearned for a real bed. The night before reaching 

 my destination I had, as travelling companion, a young man from 

 Belfast. He was a missionary in Basutoland, a native reservation, not 

 open to white settlement. His talk was extraordinarily interesting and 

 told me much of a part of South Africa that is little known to the outside 

 world. As was inevitable in those days, our talk drifted to the war and 

 he told me a tale of General Duller, which, if not true, was very cleverly 

 invented. Of course, I am unable to vouch for the truth of the story, but 

 1 cannot doubt its substantial accuracy. BuUer's relatively large army was 

 attempting to relieve Ladysmith, which had been besieged by the Boers 

 since the beginning of the war. The British had been held up for weeks 

 by the Boer trenches along the Tugela River and had lost heavily in 

 frontal attacks, which gained no ground. 



An Englishman, who lived on the Tugela and knew the country well, 

 sought an interview with a staff officer and pointed out to him a Une of 

 hills well to the eastward of the position, saying: "Those hills are on the 

 south side of the river, but they enfilade the Boer trenches and, if you 

 take the hills, as you can easily do, you will turn the flank of the Boers 

 and they will retreat immediately." The staff officer, as in duty bound, 

 reported the conversation to his chief, whose only reply was : "What the 

 hell does he know about it?" After vainly butting his head against the 

 Boer lines for some time longer, Buller finally took the eastern hills and 

 the Boers evacuated the position at once. Is not this a nineteenth century 

 version of General Braddock? Winston Churchill's account, in his 

 London to Ladysmith, is confirmatory of these facts, though, of course, 

 he has nothing to say of the English settler. 



I heard much scandal about the army administration, turning chiefly 

 upon backstairs and petticoat government and royal interference. For 

 example, I heard of a hospital nurse, in war time, who gave no end of 

 trouble and whose conduct was frankly disreputable. When I asked, 

 "Why didn't you dismiss her and send her home?" I got the reply, "Oh! 

 W£ couldn't do that, she was the protegee of Princess Somebody"; I forget 

 the name, but that is immaterial. The stories I heard may all have been 

 fakes, but they are significant of the feeling which the British army 

 created against itself, always excepting the private soldiers, of whom I 

 heard nothing but praise. In a letter from Johannesburg I wrote: "Since 



