Daily inter mountain. [volume] (Butte, Mont.) 1881-1901, 1900-03-12


was carrying $50 rounds of ammunition
in pouches hung on his belt and attach
ed with an arrangement of straps which
closely resembles the ordinary mule har-
ness used here. Hung on his back was q
heavy overcoat, which, since the march
from Orange river began has so far
as have observed, never been used
once. Then there Is the water bottle,
canteen, rifle and other necessary arti-
cles, making up about sixty pounds. The
kilt is quite unsuitable for such a march,
legs of the highlanders in the most
cruel Manner
HI. F. Provost Battersby, writing from
Orange river to the Morning Post, gives
a still clearer idea of what life is to SOL
diers on the veldt His dispatch, dated
Feb. 5th. is as follows:
THE sun feels like heated iron held
close to the skin; one cannot hold a piece
of wood which has been lying in it. The
deep, hot red sand makes untenable the
soles of ones boot and the dust rises at
each step and clings to everything that
moves. To and fro in their midst, in a
trail of dust that never settles, move
continuously the long trains of trans
ports. The sidings are choked with
trains loaded with an army. Progress is
maddeningly slow for there is but a
single line from De Aar to the Modder.'
Then comes delicate touch of local
coloring.
At evening he writes, "from one of
those low hills by tn river it looks like
one of the great fairs of southern Rus
sia. No man could paint that picture
and paint into it the sense of war. Even
the bugles which cry to each other down
there about the fires have no stern hard
ness in them-no song of death. There
is not in all these miles the dimness of
one bead of dew. But it is the plaques
Of dust and flies that make life so un-
bearable.'
From Modder river Mr.. Battersby
writes: when the first shot was fired
across the Modder the land was green
in it's way. 1t had at least on it make
believe of grass, sparse dried, untooth-
some looking herbage, which man and
beast accepted as fodder. Now it is
blazing red waste of sand. The waste
extends, the sand is intensified as regi-
ment is added to regiment, battalion to
battalion, battery to battery, troop to
troop. The dust which was once
nuisance, is now little less than plague.
1t is always being stirred-by the strings
of horses on their way to watering,
which pass and repass to the river al
most every hour of the day, by the
squealing droves of transport
mules, and by the long spans of oxen.
"But the dust devils are little more
than an amusement to our dust ridden
souls. It is the dust which comes, not
In daily spirals, but in overwhelming
clouds, which hides not tent here
and there, but the entire camp, the
roof of heaven, all vestage of the world,
which blinds the eyes and brings blood
to the eyelids, fills the mouth with it's
gritty foulness and coats every inch
Of the body with a film, which last not
For few clustering moments, but hour
after hour of unrelieved torture, which
It Is impossible to rid. Well, we shall
have, please heaven. but a few more
lay of it now.
AFTER the dust-and but short way
after-the flies. One used to think, as
child. besides the lice and the blood and
The blains that the Egyptians were let off
rather lightly with flies. A short stay
oy the Modder river alters that opinion.
The tent is black with them, the Jam
pots hum under the hand that lifts them
rom the table and the flies pour out be-
.ween ones fingers like black spouts of
0%o,, HolIo
and the pen is clogged with their severed
'eet. Beyond doubt, one did the Egyp-
ian an injustice.
"But with the dust and the flies !
roubles cease. Against them must be |
'et the magnificent sunlight day after
lay, the clear cool nights and the p,en-
itude of air.