Evening journal., 1900-02-10

VAIL.
Julian Ralph's letters from the front
to the London Daily Mail all give some
strikingly vivid pictures Of the South
African war. Writing from Honey
Nest Kloof he says:
After the Belmont battle / walked
over the entire field, and, between
what l saw and what was told me by
our officers and men who had td6en
part in the assault, l learned more
about the Beers as fighting men than
l had been able to gather all over the
Cape Colony in the preceding four
weeks.
To begin with, the English reader
may picture a kopje or hill in this
country as a pile OF boulders-a stone
heap. II may be a hill or a small
mountain-50 feet or 1900 feet in
height, though in the battlefields where
we have thus far fought the kopjes
have not been above 500 feet or below
$50 feet
All have been heaps Of loose bouid-
ers, and the practice OF the enemy has
been to life and carry the smaller rocks
about so as to build breastworks OF
them.
Behind these, always built around
the tops OF the hills, the Beers hide
and shoot.
Let me describe the top of one small
hill in the Belmont engagement, the
one in storming which the brave
Grenadiers suffered part of their fear
fully heavy loss. All around the edge
of the top were circular or semi-Oir-
cular breastwOrks of rocks They were
so many fOrts-One for each fighting
man. Being high in the air and over
looking a great valley they were very
like the lofty eyries Of birds Of prey.
To look into them, with their rude
bedding, scattered food, and general
debris, was as If one viewed the nests
of so many hawks.
On this kopje the Boer commander
had compelled the poorer men of nj.
command to live for weeks. / took Il
that these were men of the servant ant
the laborer class. Their dead, whose
untidy and neglected bodies ! saw
seated as the British bullets and bay.
onets found them, confirmed this the
ory for they were poorly clad, IN
shaven, unclean and hungry looking
They were Of that class of Boer whom
James Bryce describes as having start
ed at a seventeenth century standard
and deteriorated for three hundre,
years. l knew when / saw such mel
among the dead, the wounded, and thl
prisoners, how it could be that whit
men could misuse the white flag ant
mock the sacred purpose of the Genevi
Cross.
In nearly every eyrie where men hal
been compelled to stay and live Their
was a teakettle, an extra coat for nigh
covering, a sack in which food ant
clothes had been brought and whicl
next had served as a pallet, some meal
les, unleavened biscuits or bread-cakes
junks of biltong or jerked meat and
kitchen knife. The food, the dirt an
the extraordinary profusion of car
tridges and cartridge wrappings wer
all mixed together, but the earth an
the disorder were not so offensive a
the grimy, beastly condition of tn
dead.
A few commanding .breastworks ha
been built as for a citadel on the cres
of the kopje above the ring of eyriel
In one Of these found a young Doe
dead, with a bullet hole in his fore
head. He was a superior type, intelll
gent in face, neatly dressed, and ha
been shooting with gloves on n.
hands. Had he lived to escape h
would have been one Of the very groa
many Beers who we're seen flying dow
the farther side OF the range of kopjc
and leaping upon their hols or mi
their Cape carts and spiders" The
had done what damage they coulu I
us, and, now that their own lives wes
endangered, they commanded the
subordinates to remain, and sousl
their own safety. This Is according
Boer principles-in keeping with L
etiquette aud conventions Of peopi
who know neither etiquette nor cor
Vent'on In war, II Il not By guess