The daily morning journal and courier. [volume] (New Haven, Conn.) 1894-1907, 1899-11-25
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BELEAGUERED LADY SMITH.

: dershot Of Natal" Which the Boer:
: Are Besieging.
When I left Ladysmith, in July last
there was naught to presage the pres
emit state of affairs save vague un
rest in the air, a subtle drawing to-
gether of the townsfolk and the sold
ers at the camp, and tense feeling O.
expectation of something-we knew
not what.
Ordinarily Ladysmth is a quiet, dull
little place, intensely English, in sc
far that there Is absolutely no Dutch
element to disturb the solidly loya
serenity of the town--for it Is little
! more.
j We rather pride ourselves upon the
situation of Ladysmith. 1t is over 5000
feet above the sea; the froWning crests
of the Drallensberg Mountains are
about thirty miles away to the north
! and west, and help to shelter us in
winter from excessive cold The eli
mate goes to rather unnecessary ex-
tremes; the height of summer De-
cember and january is very hot, and
the depth of winter June and july
correspondingly cold. AT the same time
the air Is extraordinarily dry and
bracing. The open air cure for con-
sumption had been tried and proved
successful at Ladysmth years before
1t began to be talked about at horne.
We are not only healthy, but we are
very good. Probably few towns of A.,
900 inhabitants have so many places of
worship Practically every creed has
it's church or chapel, from the Dutch
Reformer which is very small con-
gregation to the Wesleyan, which is
quite considerable. We even can
boast of the Salvation Army.
Folks are won't to laugh at the inn
portance of little provincial places,
but, after all, Ladysmith is the third
| sized town in Natal Durham and
Peitermaritzburg being, of course,
good deal larger. Our Town hall, we
think, is worthy Of an English cathe-
| dral town, and we plume ourselves
considerably on the public buildings,
especially the Court house, schools
public library, and the jail.
OF course the town as town is not
| much to look ata few dusty ill-kempt
| but fairly wide streets spacious
market square,F surrounded by low,
! galvanized iron stores, many of them
Moona- Sammy Abdol Mahomet, and
the like. on the signboards, for the i'm
portant Arab" merchants Of Durham
are all represented by branch houses,
| In front of the Court house, the ho-
tells, 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 points are our
roads, our drainage and our lighting.
These ale elementary and not ON the
scale that they should be. Our oediles
promise us better things in the near
| future, but moonless night. rutty
road, and a variety of small Suits
| (ditches) have before now made the
| stranger in our midst use strong lam
guage about our rural simplicity.
| For quite long while Ladysmith
was the railway terminus from Dur
| ban, from which 1t is 100 miles away
During the gold rush to the Trans
vaal coaches, Cape carts, wagons,
spiders, even 'gin-cases- on- Wheels"
set out daily by the score for the
Northern Eldorado. AT that time the
bonded warehouses for goods in tran
sit were piled up with thousands of
pounds worth of goods for the Trans
vaal. In those days the hotel keepers
did a fourishing business in housing
intending travellers and provisioning
them for the journey. But this has all
been altered now; we are only a road
side station on the great through line
to Pretoria and beyond but we have
the branch line to Harrismith in the
Orange Free State, so that we are, af-
ter all, junction on a small scale.
There are a good many trees in Lady
smith; in fact. it is by way of being
an oasis in the Veldt, Mimosas, gum
trees of dozen kinds, yuccas, aloes,
and planes all flourish, and some of
the flower gardens are beautifully
bright in summer.
By the way, the name of Ladysmith
has the simplest of derivation. 1t was
christened after Lady Harry Smith
about the year 1910. She was the Span
ish 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 |
Kafir war of 1895, in six days is a |
matter of history
Its Military Position.
But, after ALL the chief interest i'm |
Ladysmith to-day lies in It's military |
position. In the old days of the first |
Transvaal war we had troops here, and |
the place was to all intents and pur-
poses a garrison town. But the sold
fers were eventually withdrawn, and 1t |
was not until 1898 that we were again |
familiar with the flies snd the drums.
In that year the military authorities
came up from Maritzburg and laid out
camp of considerable extent near
the water works, 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 UNI
der canvas and in so-called huts, and
three field batteries Of artillery helped
to swell the number.
Looking back to-day to the time
When the camp was re-established, Just
over two years ago, it seems to me |
that there was some inkling of strange
happenings even at that time We
talked vaguely of possibilities, but
never realized the dread actualities
4 hat 1,arr