at
Majesfontein, these four words should be carved thereon, that all who
hereafter may read of their high failure may remember also, that this
failure was entirely due to the tragic fact that "Some one had
blundered."

The picture of disaster given by the _Daily News_ was heart-breaking:--

"General Wauchope was down, riddled with bullets; yet gasping,
dying, bleeding from every vein, the Highland chieftain raised
himself on his hands and knees and cheered his men forward. Men
and officers fell in heaps together. The Black Watch charged,
and the Gordons and the Seaforths, with a yell that stirred the
British camp below, rushed onward--onward to death or disaster.
The accursed wires caught them round the legs until they
floundered, like trapped wolves, and all the time the rifles of
the foe sang the song of death in their ears. Then they fell
back, broken and beaten, leaving nearly 1300 dead and wounded."

Yes; dead and wounded--for many of the latter even remained there till
morning. Among these was poor young Wauchope, the soul of gallantry. He
was hit in four places, and lay for hours in the bitterly cold night
glued to the ground in his own gore. He was not picked up till dawn. But
gruesome as was his position, he was in the company of heroes. Round and
about were the most splendid fellows that had ever worn kilt; Colonel
Coode, and brave brilliant MacFarlan, the Adjutant of the Black Watch,
who, times and again, rallied not only his men, but any stragglers who
could be got to follow his dauntless lead. And beyond all these, close
in the teeth of the enemy, was the glorious General, the intrepid
warrior, who, after distinguishing himself in many battlefields, in the
shambles of Majesfontein "foremost fighting fell."

No word, no lament, can sufficiently express the mourning of the nation.
Of him only can we say, as was said of Sir John Moore at Coruna, "If
glory be a distinction, for such a man death is not a leveller!" Neither
for such a man is there any death! Though his dust may mingle with the
dust of the veldt, his actions must stand out for all time, and remind
his countrymen that of such glorious, immemorial dust the British Empire
has been built!

General Wauchope was born in 1846, and entered the army in
1865; was Lieutenant in 1867, Captain in 1878, Major in 1884,
Brevet-Lieutenant-Colonel the same year, Colonel in 1888, and
Major-General in 1898. He s