Daily inter mountain. [volume] (Butte, Mont.) 1881-1901, 1899-12-09
Third In Size of Towns In
the Colony of Natal.

When I left Ladysmith, in July last.
there was nausht to presage the present
state of affairs save a vague unrest in
the air, a subtle drawing together of the
townfolk and the soldiers at the camp,
and a tense feeling of expectation Of
sonething-we knew not what.
Ordinarily Ladysmith is a quiet, dull
little place, intensely English, in so far
that there is absolutely no Dutch element
to disturb the solidly loyal serenity of the
township-for it is little more.
We rather pride ourselves upon the sit
ia ton of Ladysmith. 1t is over 5000 feet
above the sea-; the frown1ng crests of the
Drakensberg mountains are about thirty
miles away, to the north and west, and
help to shelter us in winter from Excess
sive cold. The climate goes TO rather UNI
necessary extremes; the height of sum-
mer December and january is very hot.
and the depth OF winter Dune and JULY
correspondingly cold. At the same time
the air is extraordinarily dry and bracing.
the open air cure for consumption had
been tried and proved successful at Lady
smith years before it began to be talked
about at home.
We are not only healthy, but we are
| very good. Probably few towns Of 1000
inhabitants have so many places of wor-
ship. Practically every creed has its
church or chapel, from the Dutch Re-
formed. which is a very small congrega-
ton. We even can boast Of the Salvation
army.
Folks are wont to laugh at the import
ance of little provincial places, but. after
all, Ladysmith is the tlird-sizedt town in
! Natal. Durham and Pietermaritzburg be-
ing, of course, a good deal larger. Our
TOM hall, we, think. is worthy Of an Eng
lish cathedral town, and we plume our
selves considerably on the public build
ings, especially the courthouse, schools,
public library, and the hall.
OF course the town, as a town, is not
much to look at-a few dusty, i'll kempt,
but fairly wide STREETS; a spacious market
square, surrounded by low galvanized
iron stores, many Of them bearing such
curious indian names as Moona-Sammy,
Abdol Mahomet. and the like, on the sign
boards, for the important "Arab" mer-
ant of Durban are all represented by
branch houses.
In front of the courthouse, the hotels,
and the police barracks are the usual
horse-tethering rails, and one bitches up
ones pony and leaves it alone for hours,
quite secure in the average integrity OF
the passers by.
Honestly, our weak point are our
roads. our drainage, II our lighting.
These are elementary and not on the scale
that they should be. Our aediles pormise
us better things in the near future. But a
moonless night. a rutty road, and a var
iety of small SHUTS (ditches) have before
now made the stranger in our midst use
strong language about our rural SIM
plicity.
For quite a long while Ladysmith was
the railway terminus from Durham. from
which it is 1870 miles away. During the
gold rush to the Transvaal, coaches,
-, - n 80 w, on.r, rN;Ior~ ~. tl-:,
; cases on Wheels" set out daily by the
| score for the northern Eldorado. At that
time the bonded warehouses for goods in
transit We're piled up with thousands of
pounds worth of goods for the Trans
! vaal. In those days the h~otel-keepers did
a f~iourishing business in housing intend
! ing travellers and provisioning them for
the journey. But this has all been alter
ed now. We are only a roadside station
on the great through line to Pretoria and
beyond. But we nav the branch line to
! Harrismith in the Orange Free State, so
that We are, after all, a junction on a
small scale.
There are a great many trees In Lady
smith-in fact, it is by way of being an
oasis in the veldt. Mimosas, gum trees of
a dozen kinds. yHcas, aloes, and planes
all flourish, and some of the flower gar
dens are beautifully bright in summer.
BY the way, the name of Ladysmith
i has the simplest of derivations. 1t was
christened after Lady Harry Smith,
, about the year 1910. She was the Spanish
wife of General Sir Harry Smith, who
commanded the troops in South Africa
at the time. His extraordinary ride from
Cape Town to Grahamstown, a distance
of nearly 500 miles, to the relief of the
'.City of Saints in the Kaffir war of 1885,
in six days, is a matter of history.
IT'S MILITARY POSITION.
But. after all. the chief interest in
Ladysmith today lies in its military posi-
tfon. In the old days of the first Trans
vaal war we had troops here, and the
place was to all intents n purposes a
garrison town. But the soldiers were
eventually withdrawn, and it was not UNI
til 1897 that We were again familiar with
the flies and the drums. In that year the
military authorities came up from Maritz-
burg and laid out a camp of considerable
extent neal the waterworks, rather less
than two miles to the west of the town.
We We're right glad to see them. and
tried our best to do them well. There
were never less than 1000 men in camp
under canvas, and in so-called huts, and
three field batteries of artillery helped to
swell the number.