ed close to
Pretoria, and was caused by what seemed a bit of criminal
carelessness, which resulted in a terrific collision. A Presbyterian
chaplain who was in the damaged train showed me his battered and
broken travelling trunk; but close beside the wreckage I saw the
more terribly broken bodies of nine brave men awaiting burial. It was
a tragedy too exquisitely distressing to be here described.

[Sidenote: _The Refugee Camps._]

When the two Republics were formally annexed to the British Crown all
the women and children scattered far and wide over the interminable
veldt, were made British subjects by the very act; and from that hour
for their support and safety the British Government became
responsible. Yet all ordinary traffic by road or rail had long been
stopped. All country stores were speedily cleared and closed. All farm
stock or produce was gathered up and carried off, first by one set of
hungry belligerents, then by the others; physic was still more scarce
than food, and prowling bands of blacks or whites intensified the
peril. The creation of huge concentration camps, all within easy reach
of some railway, thus became an urgent necessity. No such prodigious
enterprise could be carried through its initial stages without
hardships having to be endured by such vast hosts of refugees,
hardships only less severe than those the troops themselves sustained.

What I saw of these camps at Hiedelburg, Barberton, and elsewhere made
me wonder that so much had been done, and so well done; but a gentle
lady sent from England to look for faults and flaws, and who was
lovingly doing her best to find them, complained to me that all the
tents were not quite sound, which I can quite believe. Canvas that is
in constant use won't last for ever, and it is quite conceivable that
at the end of a two years' campaign some of the tents in use were
visibly the worse for wear. Thousands of our soldiers, however, went
for a while without tents of any sort, while the families of their
foes were being thus carefully sheltered in such tents as could then
be procured. It is, moreover, in some measure reassuring to remember
that the winter weather here is almost perfect, not a solitary shower
falling for weeks together, and that within these tents were army
blankets both thick and plentiful.

Complaint was also made in my presence that mutton, and yet again
mutton, and only mutton, was supplied to the refugee camps by way of
fresh meat rat