The age-herald., 1900-01-20
DREADFUL SLAUGHTER
 OF THE HICE1LANDERS

London. January 20.-The correspondent of the Daily News thus depicts fhe way in which disaster overlook the 1iighlanders at Magersfontein:
 During the night it was considered ex- pedient that the Highland brigade, about 4,OoO strong, under Gen. Wauchope should z getSclose enough to tn cline to make it possible to charge the heights. At mid- night the gallant general moved cautiously through the darknuess toward the kopje where the Boers were most strongly en- trenched. They were led by guide who was supposed to know every Inch of the country ont into the darkness of an after noon. The brigade marched in Hnesof quar- ter column each man stepping cautiously and slowly for they knew that any sound meant death. Every order was given in a hoarse whisper and in whispers it was passed along the ranks from man to man; nothing was heard as they moved toward the gloomy. steel-fronted heights but the rushing of their feet in the veldt grass and the deep drawn breaths of the march ing men,
 'so, onward till clock in the morn- ing of Monday Then out of the darkness a rifle rang, herald of disaster A soldier had tripped in the dark over the hidden wires laid down by the enemy. In a sec ond, in the twinkling of an eye, the search lights of the Boers fell broad and clear as the monday sun the ranks of the doomed highlanders, leaving the enemy concealed in the shadows of the drowning mass of hills behind them. For one brief moment the Scots seemed paralyzed by the suddenness of their discovery, for they knew that they were huddled together like sheep within fifty yards of the trenches of the enemy. Above the confusion rolled the voice of the general: Steady men-steady and like an echo to the warning, out came the crash of nearly thousand rifles not fifty paces from them The Highlanders reeled before this spook, like trees before them The best, their bravest, fell in that wild hail of lead. General Wauchope was down, riddled with bullets, yet gasping dy- ing, oleding from every vein, the Highland chieftain raised himselm on his hands and knees and cheered his men forward
 Men and officers fell in heaps together. The Black Watch charged, and the Gordons and the Seaforths with a yell that stirred the British camp below, rushed onward-on- ward to death or disaster The accursed Wire caught them round the legs until they foundered like trapped wolves, and all the time the rifles of the foes sang the song of death in their ears. Then they fell back, broken and beaten, leaving nearly 1900 dead and ii1et xxy1,a tba of the grassy veldt melts into the embrace of the rugged African hills, and an hour later the dawning came of the drearest day that Scotland has known for a generation past. Of her officers, the flower of her chiv- airy, the pride of her breeding, but few re- mained to tell the tale, a sad tale truly, but one untainted with dshonor or smrch- ed with disgrace, for up the heights under similar circumstances, even a brigade of devils could scarcely have hoped to pass All that mortal men could do the Scots did, they tried, they failed-they fell, and there is nothing left us now but to mourn for them and revenge them.
 All that fateful day our men lay close to the Boer lines under a blazing sun; over their heads the shots of friends and foe passed without ceasing All day long the battle ragged Scarcely could see the foe-all that met our eyes was the rocky heights that spoke with tongue of flames whenever our troops drew near. Once our guards made a brilliant dash at the trenches, and like a torrent their resistless valor bore all before them. We'll did they avenge the slaughter of the Scots.
 Out of their trenches rushed the men as men in England's harvest fields, and the human streams were plentiful where the British guardsmen fought. Then they fell back from above the heights and the Boers above them fell thick as the spume of the surf on an Australian rock-ribbed coast. But the guards had proved to the Boers that man to man, the British were their superiors. In the valley behind the outer line of hills the dead lay piled in hundreds, and the slope of the hill was a charnel house where the wounded writhed among the dead ghastly tribute to British gum nery. When, at 1:3O p. m. of Tuesday, We drew off to Modder River to report we left nearly 5000 dead and wounded of the grim old Cronje's men as a token that the lion of England had barred his teeth in earnest"
 The last mails from the Cape brought numerous accounts of Magersfontein, but none so vivid as this.