56
IMPERIAL LIGHT HORSE SHELTERS 77
THE DRIFT AND WATERING-PLACE 80
BULWAN 105
HOSPITAL IN TOWN HALL AFTER A SHELL 127
BREECH BLOCK FROM GUN HILL 148
A PICTURESQUE RUIN 183
HEADQUARTERS AFTER A 96LB. SHELL 186
EFFECT OF 96LB. SHELL ON A PRIVATE HOUSE 201
SPECIMEN OF BOER SHELLS 252
INDIAN BAKERY 268
GENERAL RT. HON. SIR R.H. BULLER, V.C., G.C.B., K.C.M.G., K.C.B.
(_photograph by KNIGHT, Aldershot_) 291
SKETCH PLAN OF COUNTRY SOUTH AND WEST OF LADYSMITH 306
NOTE
This book has been reprinted, by kind permission of the Proprietors of
the _Daily Chronicle_, from the full text of the Letters sent to the
paper.
LADYSMITH
THE DIARY OF A SIEGE
CHAPTER I
ON THE EDGE
NEWCASTLE, NATAL, _Thursday, October 5, 1899_.
Late last Sunday night I found myself slowly crawling towards the front
from Pretoria in a commandeered train crammed full of armed Boers and
their horses. I had rushed from the Cape to quiet little Bloemfontein,
the centre of one of the best administered States in the world, where
the heads of the nation in the intervals of discussing war proudly
showed me their pianos, their little gardens, little libraries of
English books, little museums of African beasts and Greek coins, and all
their other evidences of advancing culture. Then on to Pretoria, the
same kind of a town on a larger and richer scale--trim bungalow houses,
for the most part, spread out among gardens full of roses, honeysuckle,
and syringa. But at the station all day and night the scene was not
idyllic. Every hour train after train moved away--stores and firewood in
front, horses next, and luggage vans for the men behind. The partings
from lovers and wives and children must be imagined. They are bad enough
to witness when our own soldiers go to the front. But these men are not
soldiers at all. Each of them came direct from his home in the town or
on some isolated farm. They rode up, dressed just in their ordinary
clothes,
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