Williston graphic. (Williston, Williams County, N.D.) 1895-1919, 1900-10-18
FIRE SWEEPS THE VELDT.
SOul-Stlrrlng Picture of Terror and
DesolatiOn in the South
African Plains.

DeSOlIt1On IN the SOutn
African Plains.
Far away on our left flank the
enemy hold the heights and watch
us moving outward, while between
them and us, stretching mile after
pies n line of scarlet fame, for the
foe has fired the veldt to starve the
transit mules, horses and oxen, says
the London News. Like a sword I'M
sheathed 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 awhile
above their ravished 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
sailors beard, flash suddenly into
view and as suddenly disappear again.
Here and there a graceful spring
buck dashes through the smoke, with
head thrown back and graceful limbs
extended, his glossy notified hide
looking doubly beautiful backed by
that red streak of fire. The wind
catches the quivering crimson streak
and for awhile the flames race, as l
have seen wild horses neck to neck
rush through the saltbush plains at
the sound of the stockman's whip.
Then, as the wind drops, the flames
curl carelessly around the wealth OF
growing fodder, biting the grass low
down and wrapping it in mantle OF
black and red as fame and smoke
commingle.
Here and there pool of water,
hidden from view until the fire fiend
stripped 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 snufiing the smoke-laden air
until the breath of the blaze awakens
them to sense of peril; then with
horns lowered like bayonets at a
charge, with tails stiff and straight
behind them as leveled lances, they
leap onward, over or through every
thing in front of them, believing
frantically their brute protest against
the red ruin of war. The flames roll
on, they reach the stone walls of a
cattle pen and leap it as hunter
takes brush fence in his stride, on
ward still until Katfr kraal is
reached. The soft-tipped pillows kiss
the uncouth mud wall and for mo-
ment transfgure them with name
less beauty, the beauty that precedes
! ruin. Only a moment or two and
then the resistless destroyer tiaunts
it's pennons amid the reed-thatched
roofs, the sparks leap up, the black
smoke curls toward the sky, while on
the neighboring hills the negro WON.
en- with their babes in their arms wall
woefully, for those rude huts, with
all their barbarous trappings, meant
home-aye, home and happiness to
them. The flames roll onward, now
in two long lines, for the Kaffir en-
campment had sundered them, and
now they look, with their beautifully
rounded curves sweeping so graceful
ly out into the unknown, like the rich.
ripe lips of wanton woman in the
pride of her shameless beauty. All
that they leave behind is desolation.
only blackened walls, simmering car.
casses, weeping women and wailins
children.
Away on our right flank we can
just make out the skeletons of what
few hours before had been cluster
of smiling farmhouses. They do not
smile now; they grin horribly in the
sunlight, grin as the fieshiess skulls
of dead men grin on 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
and princes, invented in hades and
patented in all the temples of sorrow.
Few Good Maps of China.
There are hardly any maps avail
ah1e If China and those that are Duh-