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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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