TOO MUCH DEMONSTRATION.

Evening Post, Volume LIX, Issue 128, 31 May 1900, Page 6

TOO MUCH DEMONSTRATION.

An extraordinary incident in connection with the Mafeking demonstration is reported in the Taranuki News to have happened at Waitara. A gentleman with artillery inclinations hunted up an old cast-iron cannon, formerly belonging to the s.s. Airedale, wrecked many years ago near Waitara. After firing several rounds and showing the public various items of gun drill a la Royal Artillery, he thought he would fill her up with blasting powder and ram it home with a sledge hammer, so as to obtain a rousing report. The charge exploded, and so did the gun, smashing several windows, an outhouse, and parts of fences. Two of the pieces went through the outer wall of a new &hop, striking and damaging a partition inside ; another piece was pull ed up some fifty feet away. A large number of peopie were in the neighbour hood, and it is wonderful no one was injured or killed. The artilleryman is alive, and feels satisfied that- he gave the Waitara people an ocular demonstration of the siege of Mafeking; ONE OF BADEN-POWELL'S RUSES During one of the bombardments of Mafeking (says a contemporary) Colonel Baden-Powell found that the Boers were firing one of their big guns over the town right plump into another of their own laagers. This being too good an opportunity to be lost, some bags of powder were got together, and whenever the Boer gun fired these were set alight, leading the artillerists to believe that they had got the range on Marketsquare. Thei game continued merrily for some time — until a mounted messenger from the opposite laager arrived in breathless haste at tho gun position and explained matters.