A WAR CORRESPONDENT'S EXPLOIT.

Daily Telegraph (Napier), Issue 3554, 29 November 1882, Page 4

A WAR CORRESPONDENT'S EXPLOIT.

The special correspondent of the Glasgow Daily Mail, Mr Bennett Burleigh, gives the following account of his ride to Tel-el-Kebir: —After writing my description of the cavalry ride to Cairo and the occupation of the city, I was at a loss to send off my despatches. I could send through a brief telegram in Arabic, but nothing further. Tho longer telegrams from Cairo were first sent to Zagizig for the censor's inspection and then on to Ismailia. Knowing this would cause endless delay, and a locomotive which the Egyptians readily granted being required by our own commanders, nothing was left but to ride back to Tel-el-Kebir; and with this view I started alone from Cairo with a fresh steed at 8 o'clock on Friday morning. For the whole distance I met rebel stragglers making for Cairo, both of the cavalry and infantry. The fugitives, I noticed, kept out in the desert somewhat from the regular route, and were so beaten and demoralised that a dozen of them would start off on noticing a single stranger approaching. After passing Belbeis my horse gave out. and the last ten miles I trudged on foot. Occasionally a fugitive would fly out of my path and into the desert, but no attempt was made to molest me until after dark, when the crack of a rifle and a whistling bullet, followed by another at a short interval, warned me that I was being stalked. A little subterfuge threw the Bedouins off my trail, and although two more shots wore iired they were equally harmless. I was by this time in close proximity to the battlefield of Wednesday, and some of the wounded were moaning even then in a pitiful way, having lain two days on the field. Nearer the Tel-el-Kebir camp the number of wounded were less, having evidently been attended to and taken care of by our people, but the number of dead bodies was infinitely greater. Ifc seemed impossible ta take half a dozen steps without stumbling over a corpse. The stench from die battlefield after two days' hot sun was almost unbearable. It was with feelings of the greatest relief that I at last reached camp at halfpast ten at night, having covered the distance from Cairo in fourteen hours.