The Topeka state journal. [volume] (Topeka, Kansas) 1892-1980, 1900-01-18

to charge the heights. At midnight the
gallant general moved cautiously
through the darkness towards the kopje
where the Beers were most strongly
entrenched- They were led by a guide
who was supposed to know every inch
of the country, out into the darkness Of
an African night. The brigade march
ed 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 whis-
per 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
brushing of their feet in the veldt grass
and the deep drawn breaths of the
marching men.
80 onward, until three o'clock of the
morning of Monday. Then out of the
darkness a rifle rang, sharp and clear
herald of DISASTER soldier had trip
ped in the dark over the hidden wires
laid down by the enemy.s In a second,
in the twinkling of an eye, the search
lights of the Beers fell broad and clear
as the noon day sun on the ranks of the
doomed HighlanderS, though it left the
enemy concealed in the shrouds of the
froWning 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.
Then clear above the confusion rolled
steady'-and like an echo to the vet
Grams out came the crash Of nearly
thousand rifles not fifty PAGES from
them. The Highlanders reeIed before
the spook-like trees before them. Their
best, their braveSt fell in that rain of
lead. General Wauchope, riddled with
bullets, yet gasping, dying, bleeding
from every Vein-the Highland chief
tain raised himself on his hands and
knees and cheere,- his men forward.
Men and officers fell in heaps to-
gether. 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 foundered 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 1900
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 a generation past. OF her
officers, the flower Of her chivalry, the
pride of her breeding, but few remained
to tell the tale, a sad tale truly, but one
untainted with diShOnOr or Smirched
with disgrace, for up those heights, I'M
der similar circumstances, even bri-
gade of 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 them and avenge
them.
IAN that fateful day our men lay
close to the Boer lines under a blazing
sun; over their heads the shots of
friends and foes passed without ceas-
ing All day long the battle ragged
Scarcely could we see the foe; all that
met our eyes was the rocky heights
that spoke with tongue of flame when
ever our troops drew near. Once our
guards made a brilliant dash at the
trenches and like a torrent their re-
sistless valor bore them, and for a few
brief moments they got within hitting
distance of the foe. Well did they
avenge the slaughter of the Scots; the
bayOnets, like tongues of fame, passed
above or below the rifle guard and
swept through brisl1et and breast bone.
Out of their trenches the guardsmen
tossed the Beers as men in English
harvest fields toss the hay when the
reapers' scythes have whitened the
corn fields, and the human streams
were plentiful where the British
guardsmen stood. Then they fell back,
for the fire from the heights above
them fell thick as the spume of the
surf on an Australian rock-ribbed
coast. But the guards had proved to
the Beers that, man to man, the Brit
on was his master.
I'm vain all that day Methuen tried
by every rule he knew to draw the en-
envy; vainly the lancers rode recklessly
to induce those human rock l1mpetS to
come out and cut them off, Cronje
knew the mettle of our men, and an
ironical laugh played around his iron
mouth, and still he stayed within his
native Businesses; but death sat ever
at his elbow, for our gunners dropped
the lyddite shells and the bowling
shrapnel all along his lines until the
trenches ran blood and many of his
guns were Silenced.
I'm the valley behind his outer line
of hills his dead lay piled in hundreds,
and the slope of the hill was q charnel
house where the wounded all writhed
amidst the masses of the dead, a
CHASTITY tribute to British gunnery.
When at 80 p m. on Tuesday we drew
off to Modder river to report, We left
nearly 5000 dead and wounded of grim
old Cronjes 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. Julian
Ralph, in the Daily Mail, very bluntly
writes of the Highlanders after the
first volley from the hidden trenches:
''They turned and ran, literally col
liding and climbing over one another in
their confusion A chaplain forward in
the ranks was knocked down and
trampled, as brave a man as any. yet
one who declared that there lived no