Thus In The Heart Of A Native
State The Two Great White Races Of South Africa Were To Be Seen
Locked In A Desperate Conflict.
However unavoidable, the sight was
certainly one to be deplored.
To the Boer credit, or discredit, are also to be placed those
repeated train wreckings, which cost the British during this
campaign the lives and limbs of many brave soldiers who were worthy
of some less ignoble fate. It is true that the laws of war sanction
such enterprises, but there is something indiscriminate in the
results which is repellent to humanity, and which appears to
justify the most energetic measures to prevent them. Women,
children, and sick must all travel by these trains and are exposed
to a common danger, while the assailants enjoy a safety which
renders their exploit a peculiarly inglorious one. Two Boers,
Trichardt and Hindon, the one a youth of twenty-two, the other a
man of British birth, distinguished, or disgraced, themselves by
this unsavoury work upon the Delagoa line, but with the extension
of the blockhouse system the attempts became less successful. There
was one, however, upon the northern line near Naboomspruit which
cost the lives of Lieutenant Best and eight Gordon Highlanders,
while ten were wounded. The party of Gordons continued to resist
after the smash, and were killed or wounded to a man. The painful
incident is brightened by such an example of military virtue, and
by the naive reply of the last survivor, who on being questioned
why he continued to fight until he was shot down, answered with
fine simplicity, 'Because I am a Gordon Highlander.'
Another train disaster of an even more tragic character occurred
near Waterval, fifteen miles north of Pretoria, upon the last day
of August.
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 717 of 842
Words from 191840 to 192135
of 225456
