The daily morning journal and courier., 1900-01-25

than might be supposed to lie for thir- teen hours under a semi-tropical sur without more food or water than has been carried into action, and the. need to obey rules laid down as to emergency rations and water bottle hae become urgent.
 With this retreat the battle ended except that the artillery, covering their own retirement, fired continuously, fol some twenty minutes, ending with a salvo of lyddite shell from the howitzers that shook the ground
 The Guards were left to bivouac as they lay, and continued their line to the left to occupy the position left by the Highland Brigade. Some of them ad- vanced during the night far enough to see that the Boers were still manning their intrenchments and refreshing themselves out of the gin bottle that always form a striking feature of their evacuated earthworks.
 Desultory shelling from the Boers' ex- treme right had marked the close of the day, and with the morning it again be- gan. Presuming on the military tradi- tions of the Boers, the artillery had re- mained all night on the field and recom- menced fire, but this lasted for short time only, and by g o'clock the brigades were on their march back to the river, leaving only the ambulances at their dreary work.
 This picturesque account of the bat tie comes from the London Daily News Australian correspondent, who writes as follows:
 Our troops extended over many miles of country. Every move had to be made in full view of the enemy upon a level plane where a collie dog could not have moved unperceived by those foe men hidden so securely behind impreg nable ramparts. During the whole of Sunday our gunners played havoc with the enemy, the shooting of the Na"al Brigade being of such a nature that even thus early in the fight the big gun of the bluejackets, with its 42-pound lyddite shell, struck terror into the hearts of the enemy But as the Boers were not idle. Whenever our infantry in manoeuvring, came within rifle range of their rifles, our ranks began to thin out, and the blood of our gallant fel- lows dyed the sunbaked veldt in richest crimson.
 During the night that followed, 1t was considered expedtent that the High land brigade, about four thousand strong. under Gen. Wauchope, should get close enough to the lines of the foe to make it possible to charge the heights. At midnight the gallant but ill-fated general moved cautiously through the darkness toward the kopje where the Boers were most strongly in- trenched. They were led by guide, who was supposed to know every inch of the country, out into the darkness of an African night. The brigade marched in line of quarter-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 to- ward the gloomy, steel-fronted heights but the brushing of their feet in the veldt grass and the deep-drawn breaths of the marching men.
 So, onward until three o'clock on the morning of Monday. Then out of the darkness rifle rang, sharp and clear, herald of disaster-a soldier had ripped in the dark over the hidden wires laid down by the enemy In second, in the twinkling of an eye, the search lights of the Boers fell broad and clear t11o ny1 the doomed Highlanders, though it left the enemy concealed in the shawows Of the frownng mass of hills behind them. For one brief moment the Scots seemed paralyzed by the suddenness of the dis covery, for they knew that they were huddled together like sheep within fifty yards of the trenches of the foe Then, clear above the confusion, rolled the voice of the general: Steady, men, steadyn' And, like an echo to the vete- rans, out came the crash of nearly a thousand rifles not fifty paces from them. The Highlanders reeled before the shock like trees before the tempest. Their best, their bravest, fell in that wild hail, of lead. General Wauchope was down, riddled with bullets; yet grasping, dying, bleeding from every vein, the Highland chieftain raised him. self 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 yell that stirred the British camp below, rushed onward-onward to death or dis aster. The accursed wires caught them round the legs until they fioundered like trapped wolves and all the time the rifles of the foe sang the song of death in their ears. Then they fell back broken and beaten, leaving nearly thirteen hundred dead and wounded just where the broad breast of the grassy veldt melts into the embrace of the rugged African hills and an hour later the dawning came of the dreariest day that Scotland has known for gen. eration past. Of her officers, the flower of her chivalry the pride of her breed- ing. but few remained to tell the tale, sad tale truly, but one untainted with dishonor or smirched with disgrace for up those heights under similar circum- stances. even a brigadeof devils could scarce 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