Cronje's Last Stand.

Lake Wakatip Mail, Issue 2902, 17 January 1911, Page 3

Cronje's Last Stand.

During their recent tour of South Africa some of the representatives of the overseas Dominions made a special trip to Faardeberg, and the party walked over the trenched ground above the Modder river, where Cronje held oat sllenly to the last gasp. Fragments of shell and used cartridges still strew the ground, and one unexploded cartridge was picked up. The trenches are half filled up, but the lines still .-.how plainly how the British troops pushed and poshed the stubborn Boer general into his hopeless corner. As the motors ran across the dusty plain, a single aasvogel flapped slowly away. A mob of curious black-headed sheep straggled reluctantly from the road. They were of the old Afrikander breed that has been in South Africa since the earliest days, but is being rapidly pushed out by sheep which will provide wool as well as mutton. The past seemed to linger about the scane of Cronje's last stand, but there are sad monuments there which mark the change of time. It was for these monuments that the three Dominion delegates carried white flower wreaths (says the special correspondent of the Melbourne • Argus'). Mr Lemieuz laid his tribute on the graves of the Canadian soldiers, and Mr Fisher and Mr Fowlds had a like duty where the white crosses marked the trenches that held Australians and New Zealanders who paid Cronje's last reckoning.