The Sight of a Lifetime.

Daily Telegraph (Napier), Issue 9821, 21 July 1900, Page 8

The Sight of a Lifetime.

Mr F. W. Wilkin-on, describing the advance on Kroonstad, says : — As a matter of fact, during the last few weeks we have been making war more seriously than before. Thei c has been mote of the old-time orthodox accompaniments to it. You see in the wake of a column nowadays huge clouds of hanging smoke, which spell devastation to luckless farmers on the way. This huge army marching along slowly , northward really affords one of the finest . sights in the world. Immense struggling ; masses of bullocks, mules, black boys, i and waggons and dust; soldiers ■ mounted »nd on foot, huge balloons • alwajs inflated skimming over the sur- , f ice of the ground, held down by their i anchoring waggons, ambulances, and i guns of every pattern on earth, mobs of ■ driven sheep and ox'n, growing gradually smaller day by day as the butcher's . knife gets into them—the whole mass struggling forward in clouds of trailing ; dust, rent by the shouts of the nigger drivers and' the swish of their long , bamboo fishing-rod whips. Over the trackless veldt they carve broad beaten roadways, which run approximately parallel for miles and miles, until a drift is reached, when all lines converge ie the one center, and traffic is blocked for hours together. The Zand River crossing was one of the vlghts of a lifetime. The whole of the t.ansporc was blocked for 48 hours. Precipitous, sandy, stony slopes down the ■rn-er bed, or fiendish drift, and sill ran--j fiendish pull up the other side. Only on:, waggon could go up at a time, and every ( other one got stuck; while thousands and thousands of others stood i:i p tiently waiting their turn from sunI rise to.sunset. Th« plain for miles round I v.Ms iitered with waggons, big guns, j aiY vehicles of e\ery description. A hundred natives were pat on to reduce the gra-'e3 on titLct' bank, working iulermittet'tly as waggons passed. A correspondent's cart, with four horse?, blocked the way for an hour, while staff ofneerscursed and blasphemed themselves out of breath. The re3t of us gave up the attempt for that day, and went into camp for the night within a few yards of the crossing. Next morning there was the same tronble. The mass of straining waggons had not grown appreciably less. We waited and waited and waited, then slipped through between two ambulance waggons, having made our peace with a trausport officer. Then up and up and up for 31 miles to Kroonstad.