Yorkville enquirer. [volume] (Yorkville, S.C.) 1855-2006, 1900-03-10
PRINCIPALLY NOISE.
The Deadly Lyddite Does Not Live Up to .
It's Reputation.


It's Reputation.
The actual as opposed to the moral
effect of the lyddite shells is still
matter of much discussion. The New
York Suns correspondent in Pretoria
sends the following report which was
written by burgher named Preller,
serving in General Botha's laager out
side Ladysmith, and sent to F. J.
Kleighnaus, minister of mines in Pre-
toria:
"We were told by those who called
themselves our friends how unwise it
would be for us to attempt to measure
our strength against that of England,
and were Informed that the rocks be-
hind which in other wars We had taken
shelter would not serve US in this case,
for Emergencies which were employed
would shower down upon US hellish
rain of devastating material which
would scatter our rocky shelters like
chaff before the wind. For hundreds
of square yards around the spot where
one of these death-dealing instruments
fell nothing was to escape with life, the
terrible lyddite was to perform with a
certainty such as had never before been
known, its murderous work. And all
these terrors, which had been so assid-
uously preparing for us for years past,
have, after all, not proved as terrible
as We were led to expect. Our sur
prise on being asked by the prisoners
whom We had captured from the Eng
lish, What effect had the lyddite shells
when they burst p cannot be described
in words. We had found dum.dum
bullets on the battlefield but that lyd-
dite had been used we never dreamed.
On more careful investigation we
found, however, that there was some
thing strange in connection with the
greenish. yellow column of smoke which
arose wherever the bombs fell, and at
once rose the cry, take care, there is
death in that smoke, poison there
must be or otherwise it were impossi-
BILE for death to be spread for a space
of 400 yards around. And such de-
struction must take place because the
English themselves had said So
1--WE have been convinced. 1t was
Iyddite. 1t so happened that we bad
an opportunity of seeing for ourselves
the effect of lyddite, and that we were
able to form some conception of the
consequences of inhaling the deadly
fumes. We were standing close to one
of the Long Toms which are attracting
the fire of the enemy as the magnet
attracts steel, it rained heavy and fast
around US from the enemy's guns,
when The ships cannon landed shell
close to us. 1t made tremendous
noise as it struck the ground, some
distance behind our guns, sank about
four feet in the yielding soil, and com.
ing upon rock, burst with most un-
earthly noise similar to that which is
caused by violently hammering an iron
building with q heavy hammer. 1t
made hole in the ground big enough
to bury horse in. 1t so happened
that one of our men was at that time
not more than ten PAGES from the spot
where the shell exploded and loud
were our expressions of sympathy with
the poor man whom we should never
see again-the first victim of the lyd-
dite. The fatal smoke cloud rose high
in the air, and the fragments of the
shell hurled through space, with a
snarling sound in all directions. Our
man stood up, walked toward the hole
which had been made by the shell, and
stood calmly gazing down into it.
"With respect to the actual working
of the bombs, may inform you that
the material in the bag marked X
appears to be ignited Immediately upon
the projectile coming into contact with
any hard substance, and this imme-
diately sets fire to the lyddite, which
explodes with the effect above de-
scribed. The English say that lyddite
has six times the explosive power OF
dynamite but at the same time, it is
quiescent, and will not, like dynamite,
explode merely upon impact, and it
cannot, therefore, be fired with ordi-
nary power, and when it falls it bursts
into fragments, which scatter on
every side. When the lyddite was
experimental with in Pretoria the
same results were obtained, and We
came to the conclusion that the pro-
iectiles were about as harmless as those
of the early part of the eighteenth
century"