Owing to the great heat, we move the position of our camps once a week. What with dead horses and cattle the air is absolutely putrid, and ’tis a precaution most imperative. On the march the foul smells encountered are terrible, owing to the number of dead horses and cattle lying on the highway. From Pretoria to Balmoral we passed as many as two or three hundred carcases in different stages of decomposition. The very water is often polluted, and considerable inconvenience is the consequence. In a previous letter I incidentally mentioned veldt fires, but at the Crocodile River camp it was our luck to be in the thick of one, and that at midnight. We had made the camp at sundown, and as darkness set in we were enraptured with the pyrotechnic display of the surrounding kopjes on fire. It was a magnificent sight, though awful. By 10 P.M. the camp was hushed in slumber except for stable pickets, when the wind shifted and blew the flames towards the camp. Gradually the veldt near us took fire, till at midnight we were completely surrounded. The roar was appalling, while myriads of insects filled the air. The situation was one needing immediate action, as every moment was precious. ‘Stand to your horses and saddle up,’ were the orders anxiously given. All was confusion—men hurriedly folding up blankets, &c., Kaffir boys running about conducting oxen to inspan, bodies of men running towards the fast approaching flames carrying blankets to beat them down. In the midst of all a patrol of the 18th Hussars were seen completely cut off from the camp and surrounded with flaming veldt. A rush was made, and hundreds of blankets soon cleared a space, and the patrol emerged, the horses showing every sign of terror. It was an anxious time, but in half an hour all was safe, and the flames had been successfully diverted from their course of destruction. Such a fire in the back veldt it would have been impossible to cope with. On the western veldt these fires destroy complete herds of cattle annually, and are much dreaded.
THE LAUNDRY
(From a sketch by J.S. Cowen)
One day at Barberton four of us were on observation post when four Boers came along the road; they were immediately challenged and told to show their passes, which they did; they then sat down to rest alongside us. One of them, named Meyers, could talk English perfectly, and when he found we were of Lumsden’s Horse he said he had escorted one of our fellows from Ospruit to Pretoria a prisoner, and shared two bottles of whisky. He then told us the Boers knew exactly, when we were at Spytfontein, how many men went on picket every night, and how many we were all told. He also said on April 30 the brigade adjutant rode up within twenty yards of him. He shouted to Williams to surrender, and he shouted back, ‘I am damned if I do,’ and galloped off; Meyers fired all his magazine at the English officer, but missed him. Lieutenant Williams has since been killed at Bothaville.
Barberton was simply crammed with stores of all sorts, the Boers having used it as a supply depôt for some time past. It was a great treat being able to get luxuries in the shape of extra sugar, tea, coffee, sweets, &c., again after such an age, and at reasonable rates too. Pretoria was entirely denuded of these things, and I remember hunting without success round the whole town for sugar the day before we left on our last march. Matches were not to be had there at any price, whereas here we could buy them at sixpence a dozen boxes. I think we appreciated these more than anything else. We had felt the want of them tremendously during the past two or three months. English tobacco, unfortunately, was unobtainable, so we had to content ourselves with the Boer variety—a very poor substitute, I think most of us agreed, though I dare say when one got accustomed to it one would prefer it. Personally I never want to see or smell the beastly stuff again.
Barberton itself is a small gold-mining town situated at the bottom of De Kaap Mountains, and more or less surrounded by hills. On the hills forming its background are the various mines which were opened out when gold was first discovered here. Then came the rush of the Rand mines, and Barberton was left standing. The roads leading to these mines wind up and round the hillsides, and must have taken months and months of hard work to complete, I should think. The houses are built of wood and roofed with corrugated iron for the most part, and are very small. One wonders how people manage to exist in them in the summer months, when the temperature is almost if not quite as high as it is in India, and damp to boot.
It was getting very hot before we left early in October, and the old familiar limp feeling which began to pervade all ranks brought back memories of hot weather in India. Barberton is essentially a British town, and until lately, when the Boers used it as a city of refuge for their wives and families, the inhabitants were practically all British by blood if not by birth. The community must have been a fairly rough one in the old days, and one can imagine many wild orgies taking place among the miners, more or less cut off, as they were, from civilisation. Fruits of all sorts grow here, Indian as well as English—plantains, gooseberries, oranges, lemons, strawberries—and vegetables too. Beautiful oat-hay for our horses was obtainable in the fields for the first week or so that we were in Barberton.
You will be sorry to hear of the death from enteric fever at Johannesburg Hospital of Private M. Follett, the elder of the two brothers—planters—who joined with the Mysore contingent. Since then, I regret to say, we have had another death from disease—that of Private J.H. Maclaine (Surma Valley Light Horse), who died of acute pneumonia in Pretoria Hospital. Transport Driver Martyn some months ago was run over and badly injured. We are sorry to hear that he has since died of the injuries he then received. One way and another a good many have left the regiment. A certain number of those left behind, sick and wounded, have been unable to rejoin the regiment and have been invalided home, among them Privates Cooper and Butler, from Madras, both of whom were taken ill at Kroonstad, the former suffering from pneumonia and the latter from pleurisy; also Private Bewsher, from Mysore, who was wounded in the knee at Elandsfontein station two days before the surrender of Johannesburg.
Our ten days at Barberton gave a welcome rest after many weary marches. The time was enlivened with dances and hunting with buckhounds for the officers and cricket for whoever could be spared. It was here that Colonel Lumsden had his unfortunate accident. He was riding back in the dark from afternoon tea at a neighbouring camp, and, being deceived by the light of a picket fire, rode straight into a nullah. The picket, luckily for him, heard the noise of the fall, and by the light of a candle went in search, finding horse and man prostrate. The horse was dead and Colonel Lumsden insensible. The good fellows, however, did their best, and, taking him up to the fire, discovered by his badges that he belonged to Lumsden’s Horse. One of them came into our camp to report, bringing us the information about 11 P.M. The doctor and ambulance immediately proceeded to the scene of the accident, and, patching him up temporarily, took him away to the Boer hospital in Barberton. By the light of day it appeared wonderful that anyone could have escaped death from such an accident. The nullah may almost be described as a fissure in the ground some 15 feet wide and 29½(measured) deep. The only thing that saved our Colonel’s life was that the horse evidently alighted on his feet, taking the brunt of the fall himself and paying the penalty with his life; this was shown by the fact that the saddle was not injured in any way.
Colonel Lumsden writes of this incident in a letter from Barberton Hospital dated October 1, 1900: