We have been kindly permitted to publish the following extract from a letter wush officer who was shut up h, and who was wounded after this letter written, The postwarks on the envelope are Ladysmith Jan. 4, Durban March Tuticorin 3rd April, Colombo April 6, and Hongkong, April 17. The letter is dated Ladys ith, 3rd January 1900
We can't even get the newspapers, but we feel sure the world in general has a very poor opinion of us, and that feeling is by far the worst of our sufferings. You Know we don't fe a bit like prisoners but the Boers are like flies.
You knock them cif somewhere and they are back in an instant. I imagine that we could march out of this place in any direction at any moment we liked.
No doubt our enemy is entrenched strongly everywhere, and we should lose agteat many men ina fight; but we should get through. Uf course, all the animals would be. shot, so that we could take nothing with us, perhaps even not guns, so that it would be hopeless to yo forward and to go back would be such a fearful blow to our amour propre' and pres tige' that everyone would put up with anything sooner than do that.
don't think this siege is our fault. We did all we humanly could. We beat the Boers badly in the only two fights I have been in against them, Indeed at the first one, Talana Hill near Dundee, they got such licking that they cleared for miles and recto-sed the Butlulo river.
The fact is that this country (Natal), as far south as the Tugela river, is eminently suited for brigand warfare, and the Boers now ave fighting a brigand war, I don't call them brigands, for they have astonish-edu, all by their state of civilisation, and, so far, things have been carried on without rancour.
Vhat won't last—some day we shall catch them and perhaps in large numbers, and then we shall have a royal battle. Up to the present time we have always had to attack and attack, while the confounded Buers lie hidden behind stones and shoot with smokeless powder.
I don't want to depreciate the Boers or their pluck and dash in invading Natal in a bold and soldierlike way. It must never he forgotten that they swarmed in with ten times our strength at first, and, as soa as we lad a few men together, we found ourselves, with field " artill opposed to men armed with siege ai It is like men with pistols tighting me with rifles, Phon, of course, our principal towns are on the railway to which therefore we ure pinned. The Boers go all over the county looting farms where there is no one to oppose them. They justly make capital Gut of it, and we give them every credit for their exploits; but the world ought to understand the defenceless state of this colony.
Well, Iam making rambling statements, not tu'run down my enemy, but to try ami explain our unfortunate posit Possibly you would like " little detailed starement of how we got into it. As you remember, I told you that this plice Ladysmith surrounded by hills of all shapes and sizes is hopelessly incapable of defence by a sunil force; so you can imagine ted was to find myself, on 22nd of September in the lust century, marching at the head of all the mounted troops northward. We went as far ay Glencoe and Dundee and encamped again in the open plain—a beautiful plain—with beautiful hills all round us. the Boers began to swarm at once, but kept ata very respectful distance, however, then; they were swarming like bees ten to fifteen thousand of them from Vryheid, from Ermelo, from Vollksrust in the Transvaal and on the Free State border ax well, On the 12th of October they declared war, and at 5.30 a.m. on the 20th of October, they fired the first shell into our camp.
this was the lot from Vryheid, Wak: kerstrom and all that neighbourhood, led by one Lucas Meyer, whom I should like to yet hold of one of these By 4 this little It had had enough of ity for unwelcome visitors. They killed and wounded between three and four hundred of us. We accounted for ity or sixty of them and there were 70 or 80 wounded who couldn't be mo}
Thad an opportunity of firing into the i brown of them once, but as they were round their hospital I didn't like to give the order, If I had, 40 or 50 more of them would have breathed their last in 1a very few minutes; and if we had pursued
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.