as not
touched me once even during the campaign when I was wet and had to
climb hills, and at Ladysmith, where I had no food for a week. Of
course, if we get tired on the way up we may go straight on from Port
Said to Marseilles and so to London. It seems funny to look upon Port
Said as being at home, but from this distance it seems as near New York
as Boston-- You will get this when we reach Zanzibar or later and we
will cable when we can.

DICK.

It was said at the time that Richard left the British forces because
the censors would not permit him to send out the truth about Buller's
advance, and that the English officials resented his going to report
the war from the Boer side. The first statement my brother flatly
denied, and the fact that it was through the direct intervention of Sir
Alfred Milner, assisted by the efforts of our consul Adelbert S. Hay at
Pretoria, that Richard was enabled to reach the Boer capital seems to
prove the latter charge equally false. Although throughout the war my
brother's sympathies were with the Boers, and in spite of the fact that
the papers he represented wanted him to report the war from the Boer
side, he persisted in going at first with the British forces. His
reasons were that he wished to see a great army, with all modern
equipment in action, and that practically all of his English friends
were with the British army. "My only reason for leaving it", he wrote,
"was the fact that I found myself facing a month of idleness. Had
General Buller continued his advance immediately after his relief of
Ladysmith I would have gone with his column and would probably have
never seen a Boer, except a Boer prisoner."

Royal Hotel,
Durban, Natal.

April 5th, 1900.

DEAR MOTHER:

We arrived here to-day and got off in a special tug together. We did
the basket trick all right, although the next time it came down a swell
raised the tug and fractured every one in the basket except Sangree and
Rogers, the two New York correspondents who were hanging on by the
upper edges. Cecil loved the place which is the Midway Plaisance of
cities and we had a good lunch and managed to get into the hotel where
there are over twenty cots in the reading room, and hall. The
Commandant objected to our going to Praetoria and seemed inclined to
refuse us passes to leave Durban for Delagoa Bay. He also was rather
fresh to Cecil, so I called him down very hard, and told him if he
couldn't make up