Titans to match
it. In these spaces we little fellows are lost.

Well, farewell. My next will be after some sort of a contest. There has
been a touch or two; enough to show they are waiting for us. A corporal
of ours was shot through the arm yesterday and struggled back to camp on
another man's horse. The dark-soaked sleeve (war's colour for the first
time of seeing!) was the object, you may guess, of particular attention.

LETTER II

BELMONT

BELMONT SIDING.

It is to be called Belmont, I believe, from the little siding on the
railway near which it was fought. On the other hand it may be called
after the farm which it was fought on. Who decides these things? I have
never had dealings with a battle in its callow and unbaptized days
before, and it had never occurred to me that they did not come into the
world ready christened. Will Methuen decide the point, or the war
correspondents, or will they hold a cabinet council about it? Anyhow
Belmont will do for the present.

What happened was the simplest thing in the world. The Boers took up
their position in some kopjes in our line of march. The British
infantry, without bothering to wait till the hills had been shelled,
walked up and kicked the Boers out. There was no attempt at any plan or
scheme of action at all; no beastly strategy, or tactics, or outlandish
tricks of any sort; nothing but an honest, straightforward British march
up to a row of waiting rifles. Our loss was about 250 killed and
wounded. The Boer loss, though the extent of it is unknown, was probably
comparatively slight, as they got away before our infantry came fairly
into touch with them. The action is described as a victory, and so, in a
sense, it is; but it is not the sort of victory we should like to have
every day of the week. We carried the position, but they hit us hardest.
On the whole, probably both sides are fairly satisfied, which must be
rare in battles and is very gratifying.

Our mounted men, Guides, 9th Lancers, and a few Mounted Infantry,
marched out an hour before dawn. A line of kopjes stood up before us,
rising out of the bare plain like islands out of the sea, and as we
rounded the point and opened up the inner semicircle of hills, we could
distinguish the white waggon tops of the Boer laager in a deep niche in
the hillside, and see the men collecting and mounting and galloping
about. By-and-by, as we advanced, there came a singing noise, and
suddenly a great pillar