EXPERIENCES IN SOUTH AB'RICA DURING THE WAR. 261 



fought about seven hours, and what I am smiling at, is the 

 frequent regrets that he expressed to me that he had not been 

 wounded. We all know how General Wauchope and others 

 were blamed. There is no war without little and great 

 mishaps. It is absurd for people to say it is a disaster here 

 and a disaster there : it is not a disaster, but an incident of 

 war. By the way, I should have told you of those patient loyal 

 men at the Woolwich Hospital. I will tell you why I talk so 

 highly of them : they came from the Colenso fight, where 

 they were beaten badly, from Spion Kop and Magersfontein. 

 Those men who had suffered so much were the fellows that 

 never grumbled in the slightest, and every man of them that 

 fought under Buller, though defeated, spoke loudly in his praise. 



Well, we came to Modder River and Magersfontein, and then 

 I went to Paardeberg ; there I saw the deep river banks that are 

 described, with holes in which they found shelter. You know 

 that General Cronje and between 4,000 and 5,000 men 

 surrendered on that occasion. I afterwards saw them in St. 

 Helena, and thought that a much better place for them. I took 

 some good snapshots of Paardeberg and all those battle-fields, 

 Belmont, Graspan, Modder River, Kimberley ; and all the way up 

 to Mafeking I picked up all kinds of curios ; they are now on 

 my walls, and people come and look at them, and would like to 

 take some of them away ; I have always to keep a sharp look 

 out when my friends come to my rooms. I have a large 

 quantity of cartridges from that trench that opposed the 

 Highland Brigade at Magersfontein. I have some remains 

 of the wire fencing that balked them as they came up to this 

 flat and fatal trench. I intended to have got a curio which I 

 picked up from one of the horses that were dead behind a 

 kopje. A lady thought how nice it would be to get one of those 

 horses' hoofs and take it home, and get it mounted as an ink 

 pot. I saw one almost severed from the leg, and I wrenched it 

 off, and walked away with it; when the atmosphere became very 

 unpleasant. I said, " Be a man now, and face it — stick to it, 

 and don't give it up," but I had to give it up, and I ran as fast 

 as I could, and left it. I felt that it would be better to be a 

 coward for a minute, than a dead man for the remainder of my 

 life. At Paardeberg I was more successful in collecting curios. 

 I got a large number of Boer stirrups, and the nurses at the 

 hospitals liked to have curios from Paardeberg. I asked, "Would 

 you care to have a stirrup ? " " Oh ! yes, should be delighted," 

 and I gave to several of them a stirrup. 



I came on to Mafeking; it was after the siege had been 



