FROM SOUTH AFRICA

New Zealand Times, Volume LXXI, Issue 4407, 13 July 1901, Page 1 (Supplement)

FROM SOUTH AFRICA

A TROOP OF STRATHCONA’S HORSE. 1

“There was a man, a common trooper, who was the grandson of a former governor of the colony and descended from a uuUo —a huge, kindly giant, with his breeding stamped on bis face and hia actions : there was a demonluced blackguard well known iu Johannesburg as a card and billiard sharper ; there was a corporal, who acted as correspondent for the “Daily Graphic,” and whose articles were as good bits of description of real fighting as anything that loft South Africa by post; there was a sergeant with about fourteen initials in front' of an assumed name, who admitted that ho was better than ho appeared to be, and no better than h e should be, for. which latter reason he fdund it convenient occasionally to vary his signature —an olive-skinned, black-mous-tached dare-devil, with th e round head and piercing eye of the true Celt. “This man, who became a-t oue time sergeant of my troop, told me tbat ho spent his life hurrying from one. fight to another, and when there was no fighting worth the name going on in a pacific world he was in the habit oft taking a little bouse in Wales, wherein the reading c f Welsh history and the, drinking of sparkling Burgundy const!-' tuted his favourite pastimes. I fro-, quently had ‘ discussions with him on some abstruse historical point, and 1 became more and more astonished at the appalling profundity of the mans erudition. One day I remarked that 1 Wales had not yet found her historian, and my sergeant replied, ‘No ; and there are only three men alive capable of writing it.’ T think I knew two of them, I answered. ‘One is my. old tutor, U. M. Edwards, of Lincoln College, Oxford, and another is Professor Rhvs. ‘You are perfectly right,’ replied my sergeant, ‘and the third is myself. “This wonderful man was, after my dear friend Hubert Howard, the oravest man I over came across. He volunteered on every occasion for the most risky work, ana he took a real pleasure in courting danger. There was a belief in the regiment that “for some reason or, other he was unhappy, and that lie had come out to Africa to try to put am end to 'himself. Bus "for this theory, to be good he must have developed unhappiness at a very early age- for on ■his own confession he had fought in nearly everv campaign of the jest twenty years. His method 01 getting out to Africa was characteristic. He arrived' in England from the ends of the earth, and determined to go out to the war by the first sL->. He rushed off to Southampton, an found that the vessel on the point of sailing was cram-full. He could not get a passao-n for love or money, so he ‘ determined to employ other means. A CLEVER RUSE. “On the quay he came upon a secondclass passenger a good deal the worse for liquor. Ho bumped against him, apologised, and a conversation on the strength of the introduction. .The second-class passenger needed hut little pressing when’ an adjournment, to the bar was suggested ; there my, friend the sergeant made him speechless drunk, noted the time, took his ticket out of his pocket, and left for the boat the last minute. Net requiring two lots of luggage, he gave the second-olass passenger's effects to the steward, and wa» consequently very well waited on all th e way to Capetown. * _ '. “Then there was V., belonging to one of the oldest families in-England, who,. I suppose, had quarrelled with his bread-and-butter some time or another—a l .refiner gentleman of the best sort,, as yet a common trooper in ours, having 1 to consort on a footing of equality with the Johannesburg swindler, and others' of his kidney; and M., who, I believe, was at Eton, with me, and who has since spent some years dn a lunatic, asylum, till released by his relatives to proceed as a trooper to South Africa,' whence he will return much saner than he arrived there after providing his' comrades infinite diversion. Poor M. I, On one occasion it is reported that, after an engagement, he rode into the Boer lines under the impression that he ■ was going home—spent the night there, 1 and left ,the next morning for his own, j camp, attended by an escort of Boers I rejoicing at their speedy deliverance' ’from an unearthly creature. . Then, there was Corporal F., the Quartermaster’s clerk, schoolmaster by profession, and a model of business-like precision, who one day astonished the. world by taking on the bully, of the corps and knocking him out in two' minutes. ‘Yes, sir;' the corporal was never tired of complacently ‘remarking’ to an interested listener; ‘I could wear my cap and gown if I'liked.’ H e had' matriculated foV Cambridge. Though! he never quitted his', office stool (o*j tinned meat-box on end) on ordinary occasions, Corporal F., was very muon to the fore when the band began tol play: but my solicitations never prevailed upon him to parade for action' clad in his mortar-board and under-i graduate’s toga.”—From “A-Subaltern’*, Letters to His Wife,” published by Messrs Longmans, Green and Co.