Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1900-01-18
FIGHT AT MAGERSFONTEIN
Graphic Accounts Of the Repulse of the High
landers.
They Stumbled Into n Trap Which the
Beers Had Laid. for
Them.

The London Daily News correspondent at
Magersfontein thus describes the disaster
which overlook the Highlanders in the bat
tie there:
During the night 1t was considered ex-
pedient that the Highland Brigade, about
1900 strong, under General Wauchope,
should get close enough to the lines of the
foe to make it possible to charge the
heights. At midnight the gallant general
moved cautiously through the darkness to-
ward the kopje where the Beers were most
strongly intrenched. The Highlanders 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 all knew that any loud 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 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 march
ing men.
Tripped on Cronje's Wires.
$50 onward unit! 3 o'clock on the morn
ing of Monday. Then out of the darkness
disaster-a soldier had tripped in the dark
over the hidden wires laid down by the
enemy. In second, in the twinkling of an
| eye, the searchiights of the Beers fell
broad and clear the MONDAY sun on the
ranks of the doomed Highlanders, though
1t left the enemy concealed in the shadows
of the frowning mass of hills behind them
For one. brief moment the Scots seemed
| paralyzed by the suddenness of their dis
| covery, for they knew that they We're hud-
1n1 oh, a
| of the trenches of the foe. Then clear
| above the confusion rolled the voice of
the general: Steady, men; steady, and
| like echo to the veterans, out came the
crash of nearly 600 rifles not fifty PAGES
| 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, gasping, dying, bleeding from
| every vein, the Highland chieftain raised
himself on his hands and knees and cheered
| his men forward. Men and officers fell in
| heaps together.
Dashed Onward to Death.
1.-THE Black Watch charged, and the Cor
| dons and the Seaforths, with a yell that
| stirred the British camp below rushed on
ward-onward to death or disaster 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 800 dead and wounded just
where the broad breast of the grassy veldt
mets into the embrace of the rugged At
rfcan hills.
An hour later the dawning came of the
drearest day that Scotland had 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 ta,e, truly, but one untainted with
1iShaF4Y "a ha1 wit
those heights under similar circumstances
even brigade 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.
All that Hateful day our wounded men
lay close to the Boer lines under blazing
sun; over their heads the shots of friends
and foes passed without ceasing All day
long the battle ragged Scarcely could We
see the foe-tll that met our eyes was the
rocky heights that spoke with tongues of
names whenever our troops drew near.
Brilliant Charge That Failed
"Once our guards made brilliant dash
at the trenches. Like a torrent their re-
sistless valor bore all before them, and for
few brief moments they got within hit
ting distance of the foe. Well did they
avenge the slaughter of the Scots; the
bayonets, like tongues of flame, passed
above or below the rifles guard and swept
through brisket and breastbone. 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 cornfields and the hui
man streams were plentiful where the
British guardsmen stood. Then they fell
back, for the fire from the heights above
them was thick as the spume of the surf
on an Australian rOck-ribbed coast But
the guards had proved to the Boer that
man to man, the British was his master
In vain all that day Methuen tried by
every rule he knew to draw the enemy:
Vainly the LanceS rode recklesSly to induce
those human rock lmpets to come out and
cut them off. Cronje knew the mettle of
our men, and he stayed within his native
businesses, but death sat ever at his elbow
for our gunners dropped the lyddte shells
and the bowling shrapnel all along his
lines, until the trenches blood, and.
many of his guns We're slenced.
IN the valley behind his outer line of
hills his dead lay piled in hundreds, and
the slope of the hill was a charnel house
where the wounded all writhed amid the
British gunnery. When, at 1:30 pm of
Tuesday we drew off to Modder river to
recuperate, we left nearly 5000 dead and
wounded of grim old Cronje's men as a
token that the lion of England had barred
his teeth in earnest
Terrible Fire of the Beers.
The last mails from the Cape brought
numerous accounts of the Magersfontein
battle, but none so vivid as this. Julian
Ralph, in the Daily Mail, bluntly writes
thus of the Hghlanders:
After the first volley from the hidden
trenches they turned and ran, literally COL
liding and climbing over one another in
their confusion chaplain forward in the
ranks was knocked down and trampled. as
brave man as any, and yet one who de-
clared that there lived no man who wouId
have behaved differently.
1T had been as if the earth had opened.
and from cleft that ran SO far as our
men reached fire had belched and shot and
swept the veidt.
The fever Of fright lasted only while
the men ran 200 yards, and then they re-
gained some measure of order"
Were Asked to Fight Until Dark.
Says the Times correspondent of the