Felt Like Rip Van Winkle.
After this I left Africa, and more than thirty years went by before I returned as a commissioner in the service of the Crown. It was a very extraordinary experience; indeed, I felt like a new Rip Van Winkle, for nearly all my old chiefs and colleagues were dead, and another generation had arisen. I can only say that I was deeply touched by the reception which I received throughout the country. It was with strange feelings that almost on the very spot where I helped to read the proclamation of annexation of the Transvaal, in 1877, and with my own hands hoisted the British flag over the land, I listened to my health being proposed by the Dutch Chief Justice of the Transvaal territory, once more a part of the British Empire. Such was my greeting everywhere. Three and thirty years before I had left the shores of Africa, believing that soon or late the British power was doomed to failure and probably to extinction there. When I left them again, six months ago, it was with the glad knowledge that, by the united wish of the inhabitants of South Africa, it was re-established, never again to pass away. It is a wonderful thing for a man in his own lifetime to see a country pass through so many vicissitudes, and in the end to appear in the face of the world no longer as England's enemy, but as a constituent part of the great British Empire, one of her best friends and supporters, glorying in her flag, which now floats from Cape Agalhas to the Zambesi, and soon will float over those contingent regions that have been seized by the mailed fist of Germany.
Capt. Mark Haggard's Death in Battle
To the Editor of The [London] Times:
Sir: In various papers throughout England has appeared a letter, or part of a letter, written by Private C. Derry of the Second Battalion, Welsh Regiment. It concerns the fall of my much-loved nephew, Capt. Mark Haggard, of the same regiment, on Sept. 13 in the battle of the Aisne.
Since this letter has been published and, vivid, pathetic, and pride-inspiring as it is, does not tell all the tale, I have been requested, on behalf of Mark's mother, young widow, and other members of our family, to give the rest of it as it was collected by them from the lips of Lieut. Somerset, who lay wounded by him when he died. Therefore I send this supplementary account to you in the hope that the other journals which have printed the first part of the story will copy it from your columns.
It seems that after he had given the order to fix bayonets, as told by Private Derry, my nephew charged the German Maxims at the head of his company, he and his soldier servant outrunning the other men. Arrived at the Maxim in front of him, with the rifle which he was using as Derry describes, he shot and killed the three soldiers who were serving it, and then was seen "fighting and laying out" the Germans with the butt end of his empty gun, "laughing" as he did so, until he fell mortally wounded in the body and was carried away by his servant.
