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REV. W. H. FRAZER, D.D., ON 



raised ; it was well worth seeing. There again was a battle- 

 field, or the place where a great military struggle was carried 

 on, and that unfortified flat town was left with 600 brave 

 men to defend it against from 6,000 to 9,000 Boers under 

 Cronje. I have a good many curios from there, and many 

 pieces of very large guns, which also are coveted by my 

 friends. 



I found one very strange thing there, viz., that the very 

 man who was thought so much of (and they did marvellous 

 things in defending that town), I found very unpopular with 

 the inhabitants, I refer to Baden-Powell. Several men who 

 came from there only the other day, said they were astonished 

 to find the ' feeling that existed there against him. They said 

 the great favourite there was one of his staff officers, and the 

 reason of his unpopularity was, their having " short commons " 

 for so long a time. Having got south from Maf eking, after a 

 little I went on my weekly excursions. I had to go about 

 300 miles every week. I held services at four different 

 stations, commencing them sometimes at 5.30 a.m. This was 

 not my choice, but what the men and their ofiicers liked. At 

 times the men would be in the trenches all night, and come 

 thence at the first opportunity to worship God. On one of 

 those occasions a terrible disaster overtook the men who were 

 encamped at Jacobsdall, when they were surrounded and 

 butchered. 



I have been taught by my experience in South Africa, that 

 the Boers have a great regard for clergymen, therefore I 

 preferred a Cape cart to an armed escort, which provoked 

 sniping. I met Mr. De Waal, of the Cape Parliament, whose 

 name constantly appears in the papers as the Secretary of the 

 Africander Bond, and I was very glad to meet him. He is an 

 intelligent man, and spoke English well. He is a Hollander, 

 and lived for many years in the United States. He spoke of 

 English rule as the most glorious that subjects could live 

 under. He spoke of his own people — that they are truly 

 religious. But I said, " What about white flags to allure the 

 British soldier into houses and other traps to have them shot 

 down ? " He said, " I am not going to defend everything they 

 do, but you will find they have every respect for clergymen," 

 and so I found it. 



The most remarkable thing I found about our young soldiers 

 was this — they had no fear of death. They had never 

 grumbled over any hardship they had to endure — there was 

 never any complaint, and I could not believe that men could 



