Close to every railway station, and hugging it for that companionship which all negroes love, are the huts of the Kaffirs. They are of every sort that costs no money and little labour. Some are holes in the earth roofed over with tin or tarpaulin, some are low huts of adobe (mud-brick) walls, some are made of that corrugated iron which is the eyesore of South Africa.

There is not a thing about these Kaffirs, or their costumes, or their houses, that I have not noticed about the Guinea negroes of Mississippi, and the rest of the "black belt " of the United States. I begin to think with Burns that "a (black) man's a (black) man for a' that." Here and in America he is equally shiftless, equally ragged, equally jaunty in his rags, equally happy in his misfortunes, equally prone to lie in the sun, to laugh, to sing, and to pilfer.

One of the queerest things about the Kaffirs is that though there are millions of them in South Africa they make no mark on the landscape. They herd in little bands in the bushes, and by the stations and villages, and you never have the faintest notion of their numbers.

The Government is hiring these blacks by the hundreds at the advance camp at De Aar, an is

paying them—what do you think? Four pounds ten a month, with clothing, lodging, and food thrown in. It is past the comprehension of Tommy Atkins how such things can be, and I have heard the officers who distribute London-made clothing say that they wish they had as good garments for themselves.

The reason for this treatment of the blacks is that they ask high wages, and are excellent drivers and transport men. It is also true that the British everywhere demoralise the blacks with too generous treatment, which is as bad for them as Boer unkindness.

CHAPTER VII

NATAL AND LADYSMITH

WE

E have seen the circumstances in which the war opened, and under which the respective combatants prepared themselves for the encounter. The only organised field force on the spot from the first was with General Sir George White, who had arrived at Durban from India on the 7th of October. His fourteen thousand troops were distributed between Pietermaritzburg, Estcourt, Colenso, Ladysmith, and Glencoe, names which were unfamiliar at that time to the majority of Englishmen, but are sadly familiar now.

In his first despatch, General White records that, on the 10th of October, the Governor of Natal informed him of the ultimatum, and that an outbreak of war on the evening of the 11th of October might be regarded as certain. It is not too much to say that the gallant general,

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even at that early period, regarded the military situation with dismay.

He knew that the Boers and the Free Staters were massed on the frontiers, ready to descend upon the northern territory of Natal from the passes of the Drakensberg mountains; he knew also that, from a military point of view, this northern department of Natal was untenable by the forces at his disposal. He therefore advised that a great portion of that territory should be abandoned, and we now know that he would have vacated the whole of the country to the north of the Tugela, had he not been overruled by political considerations. It is to this fatal error that most of our subsequent misfortunes are to be attributed.

The Boers crossed the frontiers, both on the north and west, on the 12th of October, and next day the Transvaal flag was floating over Charlestown in Natal.

The enemy came on in three columns. The main column, under General Joubert, occupied Newcastle, and then marched south. Viljoen's column cut the railway from Glencoe Junction to Ladysmith at Elandslaagte, and there took up a position. Lucas Meyer, with the third column,

crossed the Buffalo, and marched westward on Dundee.

Close to this, the centre of the coal mining of Natal, was Sir W. Penn Symons, with the 18th Hussars, a brigade division of Royal Artillery, the 1st Battalion Leicestershire Regiment and mounted infantry company, the 1st Battalion King's Royal Rifles and mounted infantry company, the 2nd Battalion Royal Dublin Fusiliers and mounted infantry company, with details. In all, about 3,500 men. Against him were gathered an unknown number of Boers.

It was afterwards learnt that, before delivering an attack, General Joubert intended to effect a junction with Lucas Meyer. General Symons, however, was prompt enough to counteract this plan. On the morning of the 20th of October he came so closely in touch with Meyer's column. that hostilities were opened, and a general battle developed. The Boers occupied a strong position on Talana Hill, 5,000 yards from the British camp at Glencoe.

The attack was opened by the Boers, who fired early on the morning of the 20th on a mounted infantry picket standing east of Dundee, at the junction of two roads from drifts across the