Manchester Democrat. [volume] (Manchester, Iowa) 1875-1930, 1900-10-03
FIRE ON THE vELDT.
SCENE OF TERROR ON SOUTH
AFRICAN PLAINS.
Flames Race Through the Tall Grass,
DESTROYING Homes of Whites, Natives
and Dumb Beasts-Wreck and Desc.
lation All that Is Left Behind.

Far away on our left flank the enemy
hold tile heights and watch us moving
outward, while between them and us,
stretching mile after mile In line with
our column, ripples line of scarlet
lame, for the foe has fired the yeldt
to starve the transit mules, horses and
oxen. Like sword unsheathed in the
sunlight, the flames sparkle amid the
grass, which grows knee deep right to
the kopje's very lips. Birds rise on
the wing with harsh, resonant cries,
flutter while above their raylshed
home, then wheel in midair and seek
more peaceful pastures. Hares spring
up before the cracking flames quite
reach their forms and, like gray
streaks in a soldiers beard, flash sud-
denly into view and as suddenly dis
appear again. Here and there grace
full springbok dashes through the
smoke, with head thrown back and
graceful limbs extended, his glossy,
mottled hide looking doubly beautiful
backed by that red streak Of fire. The
wind clutches the quivering crimson
streak and for while the flames race,
as have seen wild horses neck to neck
rush through the saltbush plains at the
sound of the stockman's whip. Then,
us the wind drops, the flames curl care
lessly around the wealth of growing
fodder, biting the grass low down and
wrapping it in mantle of black and
red as flame and smoke commingle.
Here and there a pool Of water, hid
den from view until the fire flend strip
ped the veldt land bare, leaps to life
like silver shield in the grim setting
OF the bare and blackened plain. Small
mobs of cattle stand stupidity snufi1ng
the smoke-laden air until the breath
OF the blaze awakens them to sense
OF peril; then with horns lowered like
bayonets at the charge, with tails stir
ana straight behind them as leveled
lances, they leap onward, over or
through everything in front Of them,
believing frantlcally their brute beast
protest against the red ruin of war.
The flames roll on, they reach the stone
walls of cattle pen and leap 1t as
hunter takes brush fence in his stride,
onward still until Kaffir kraal is
reached. The soft-tlpped pillows kiss
the uncouth mud walls and for q mo-
ment transfgure them with a nameless
beauty that precedes ruin. Only mo-
ment or two and then the Lesistless de-
stroyer fiaunts its pennons amid the
reed-thatched roofs. the sparks leap
up, the black smoke curls toward the
sky, while on the neighboring hills
the negro women with their babes In
their arms vail woefully, for those
rude huts, with all their barbarous
trappings: meant home-aye home and
happiness to them. The flames roll on
ward, now in two long lines, for the
Kaffir encampment had sundered them,
and now they look, with their beau
tifully rounded curves, sweeping so
gracefully out into the unknown. All
that they leave behind is desolation,
only blackened walls, simmering car
cases, weeping women and wailing
children.
Away on our right flank we can lust
make out the skeletons of what a few
hours before had been cluster of
smiling farm houses. They do not
smile now; they grin horribly in the
sunlight, grin as the fleshless skulls Of
dead men grin on a battlefield after
those sections of the veldt-the gray
hooded, curved-beaked vultures-have
screamed their final farewell to the
charnel-houses of war, noble war,
splendid war, pastime of potentates
'esla aripces. invented in hell and pat
London News: @.ass.of sorrow