alians being all mounted men, and of an exceptionally
fearless type, have suffered in a very marked degree, in just such
outpost affairs, by the arts and horrors of sniping. Sportsmen hide
from the game they hunt, and bide their time to snipe it. It is in
that school the Boer has been trained in his long warfare with savage
men and savage beasts. A bayonet at the end of his rifle is to him of
no use. He seldom comes to close quarters with hunted men or beasts
till the life is well out of them; and so in this war he has shown
himself a not too scrupulous sportsman, rather than a soldier, to the
undoing of many a scout; and in this fashion, as well as by white flag
treachery, the adventurous Australians have distressingly often been
victimised. At Manana, four miles east of Lichtenberg, one of their
officers, Lieutenant White, was thus treacherously shot while going to
answer the white flag displayed by the Boers. He was the pet of the
Bushmen's Corps, and concerning him his own men said, "We all loved
him, and will avenge him." So round his open grave his comrades
solemnly joined hands and pledged themselves never again to recognise
the waving of a Boer white flag. My assistant chaplain, with the
Bushmen, himself an Australian, emphatically declared that as in the
beginning so was it to the end; his men were killed not in fair fight
but by murderous sniping. He was with them when Pietersburg was
surrendered without a fight, but when they marched through to take
possession they were resolutely shot at with explosive bullets from a
barricaded house in the centre of the town, till the angry Bushmen
broke open the door, and then the sniper sniped no more. On reaching
the northern outskirts they again found themselves sniped, they knew
not from whence. Several horses were wounded, a trooper was killed on
the spot; so was Lieutenant Walters; and Captain Sayles was so badly
hit he died two days afterwards. Yet no fighting was going on. The
town was undefended, and the Boers in full retreat. This sniper was at
last discovered hiding almost close at hand in a big patch of tall
African grass. He turned out to be a Hollander schoolmaster, who,
finding himself surrounded, sprang upon his knees, threw up his arms
and laughingly cried, "All right, khakis, I surrender!" But that was
his last laugh; and he lies asleep to-day in the same cemetery as his
three victims.

That cemetery soon after I saw; and in the adjoining camp messed with