The Worthington advance., 1900-09-28
FIRE SWEEPS THE VELDT.
Soul-Stirrlng Picture Of Terror and
Desolation in the South
African Plains.

mile in line with our column, rip
pies line of scarlet flame, for the
foe has fired the veldt to starve the
transit mules, horses and oxen, says
the London News. Like sword un-
sheathed in the sunlight the flames
sparkle amid the grass, which grows
knee deep right to the kopje's very
lips. Birds rise on the wing with
harsh resonant cries, f1utter awhile
above their ravished home, then wheel
in midair and seek more peaceful
pastures. Hares spring up before the
cracking flames quite reach their
forms, and, like gray streaks in a
sailors beard, flash suddenly into
view and as suddenly disappear again.
Here and there graceful spring
buck dashes through the smoke with
head thrown back and graceful limbs
extended, his glossy mottled hide
looking doubly beautiful backed by
that red streak of fire. The wind
catches the quivering crimson streak
| and for awhile the flames race, as I
have seen wild horses neck to neck
rush through the saltbush plains at
the sound of the stockman's whip.
Then, as the wind drops, the flames
curl carelessly around the wealth of
growing fodder, biting the grass low
down and wrapping it in mantle Of
black and red as flame and smoke
commingle.
Here and there pool of water,
hidden from view until the fire fiend
| stripped the veldt land bare, leaps to
life like silver shield in the grim
setting of the bare and blackened
plain. Small mobs of cattle stand
stupidity snufing the smoke-laden air
until the breath of the blaze awakens
them to sense of peril; then with
horns lowered like bayonets at a
charge, with tails stiff and straight
behind them as leveled lances, they
leap onward, over or through every
thing in front of them, believing
frantically their brute protest against
the red ruin Of war. The flames roll
on, they reach the stone walls of a
cattle pen and leap it as a hunter
takes brush fence in his stride, on.
ward still until a Kafir kraal is
reached. The soft-tipped pillows kiss
the uncouth mud wall and for a mo.
ment trans6gure them with a name
less beauty, the beauty that precedes
ruin. Only moment or two and
then the resistless destroyer faunts
it's pennons amid the reed-thatched
roofs, the sparks leap up, the black
smoke curls toward the sky, while on
the neighboring hills the negro WON
en- with their babes in their arms wal
woefully, for those rude huts, with
all their barbarous trappings, meant
home-aye, home and happiness tt
them. The flames roll onward, nov
in two long lines, for the Kafir en-
campment had sundere9 them, ant
now they look, with their beautifully
rounded curves sweeping so graceful
ly out into the unknown, like the rich
ripe lips of a wanton woman in tn.
pride of her shameless beauty. Al
that they leave behind is desolation
only blackened walls, simmering car
casses, weeping women and wailins
children.
Away on our right flank we cal
just make out the skeletons of wha,
few hours before had been a cluster
of smiling farmhouses. They do mo-
smile now; they grin horribly in tn,
sunlight, grin as the feshless skull
of dead men grin on battlefield afte,
those sections Of the veldt- the gray
hooded, curvedrbeaked vultures- -hav,
screamed their final farewell to til,
charnel houses of war, noble war
splendid war, pastime of potentate
and princes, invented in hades an.
patented in all the temples of sorrow
Few Good Mars Of China.