LETTER FROM THE FRONT.

Tuapeka Times, Volume XXXIV, Issue 4899, 12 October 1901, Page 2

LETTER FROM THE FRONT.

The following letter hns been received from Trooper T. Hynes, of Waipori, now serving with the Sixth N.Z. Contingent in South Africa, dated Modder River, Ist August, 1901 :—

" We have seen a lot of South Africa since we came over here, as you will see if you follow our movements on a map. We came to Capetown in the Cornwall, bat were not allowed to land on account of the plague, and were sent up the coast to East London, where we disembarked on March 15th. W« got on the train there and went, up the line through Cape Colony and the Free State to Pretoria. We camped there for a couple of days and then started soldiering. " We marched from Pretoria to Petersburg, then to Oliphant Biver, where we camped for eight or cine days. Then we came through Eestafabricken to Silverton, near Pretoria, where we got fresh horses and clothes. The country we passed through on that march is what they call the low country of the Transvaal, which is considered the most unhealthy part of South Africa. The ground is covered with thorny trees and dwarf cactus (a prickly plant that poisoned the horses' legs, causing a lot of them to be shot). We went from Pretoria to Standerton, on the Durban line, and camped there a couple of days. From there we went to Pietretief, a town near the Swaziland border, then Utrecht and Newcastle, and right back through Carolina and Bothwell to Wond<-rfontein, a station on the

; Delagoa Bay line. We put all horses and waggonß on a train there and went down the line through Middleburg, Pretoria, and Elandsfontein to Bloemfontein, in the Free, State. We stayed there three or four days, got fresh horses, and started across country

through Magersfontcin to the Modder Biver, where we now are, a little below Kimberley. "We saw the hill at Magersfontein that Lord Metbuen tried to take from the Boers in the early part of th= w<»r ; also tha ground WaUohope and hb Highlanders marched over in the terribly disastrous night attack on the Boer trenches. The Highlanders are buried thuve in two large graves, which have wirenetting round them and two pieces of wood nailed together in the shape of a cross with the words "To our brave Highlanders" written on thpm. There are two little treea growing on each grave, and the leaf enolosed ig off one of them and is lor .

" I am in splendid health and quite used to this game now. We have had a lot of fighting, one way and another, and it is all right music to hear the bullets whizzing past your legs, but we very seldom get a fair fight as the Boers hold good positions behind rocks on the hills. They are very poor shotß, too, and make more accurate shooting at I,oooyds than they do at 100 yds. I have a good mats in Bart Labea, of Tnapeka. Ma.t. Aliok Wilson, of Wefcherstooes, got badly hurt in the back by a- fail from his horse in a fight soma time ago, and I think he will be invalided home. There are four of the Contingent dead, and a lot more wounded. When they bury a man out here they just sew a blanket round him and put him in a hole and some one reads a short service. . , ."