.]

The English church was open for worship all through the siege. It was
the only church not used as a hospital; but its windows being small and
its roof low, it would not have made an ideal hospital, and it did
splendid duty as a church. The other churches--the Wesleyan,
Presbyterian, and Dutch Reformed--were gladly surrendered for hospital
purposes, for there was all too little hospital accommodation, and all
too great a need.

For the most part the chaplains spent their Sunday mornings in visiting
their men, going from regiment to regiment, and speaking a word for
Christ wherever possible.

As the months passed, and the Boer attentions became more personal and
incessant, the troops at the front had to leave their huts or tents and
sleep in the open, and everywhere tents, if used at night, were folded
up by day, and the troops were left absolutely without cover through the
terrible heat, except such as they could find behind rock, or bush, or
tree.

[Footnote 16: Burnley _Express_, May 5, 1900.]

=Disease in Ladysmith.=

And then came disease! Ladysmith had been singularly free from enteric
before the war. The scourge of South Africa had passed it by. But it
follows an army like an angel of destruction. For weeks its broad wings
hovered above our troops, and then with fell swoop it descended.

Intombi Hospital Camp was formed right under the shadow of Mount
Bulwane, and by an arrangement with the Boers one train per day to
Ladysmith and back was allowed to run. It began with 250 patients, and
at one time had as many as 1,900. The formation of the camp meant to
some extent a division of Christian work. Messrs. Macpherson, Thompson,
Owen S. Watkins, Cawood, and Hardy, together with Father Ford, remained
in the town and camp. Messrs. Hordern, Tuckey, Pennington, and Murray,
together with Father O'Donnell, the Roman Catholic chaplain, went to
Intombi. Later on, when the hospital became so crowded that it was
impossible for the enfeebled staff of chaplains to cope with the work,
Mr. Macpherson joined them.

It is impossible to speak too highly of the heroism of these Intombi
chaplains. At first it is hard for most men to face shot and shell, but
there is always a thrill of excitement with it, and there is a strange
fascination in danger of this kind, which has a weird charm all its own.
But to face death in a great hospital camp such as this! To be all day
and half the night visiting the sick and dying where t