we succeeded in crossing the frontier in an
open coal-truck. The border-line runs about six miles north of Majuba
and Laing's Nek, the last Boer village being Volksrust, and Charlestown
the first English. The scenery changes rapidly; the high, bare veldt of
the Southern Transvaal is at once left behind, and we enter the broad
valley of Natal, sloping steadily down to the sea and becoming richer
and more tropical as it descends. All regular traffic had stopped three
days before, but now and then a refugee train came up to the frontier
and transhipped its miserable crowd. Fugitives of every nation have been
hurrying to the railway in hopes of escape. The stations far down into
Natal are constantly surrounded with patient groups, waiting, waiting
for an empty truck. Hindoos from Bombay and Madras with their golden
nose-rings and brilliant silks sit day and night waiting side by side
with coal-black Kaffirs in their blankets, or "blue-blooded" Zulus who
refuse to hide much of their deep chocolate skin, showing a kind of
purple bloom like a plum. The patient indifference with which these
savages will sit unmoved through any fortune and let time run over them,
is almost like the solemn calm of nature's own laws. The whites are
restless and probably suffer more. Many were in extreme misery. Three or
four young children died on the journey. One poor woman became a mother
in the train just after the frontier, and died, leaving the baby alive.
At the border I found many English and Scotch families, who had driven
across the veldt from Ermelo, surrendering all their possessions. All
spoke of the good treatment the Boers had shown them on the journey,
even when the waggon had outspanned for the night close to the Boer
camp. I came down to Newcastle with a Caithness stonemason and his
family. They had lost house, home, and livelihood. They had even
abandoned their horses and waggon on the veldt. The woman regretted her
piano, but what really touched her most was that she had to wash her
baby in cold water at the lavatory basin, and he had always been
accustomed to warm. So we stand on the perilous edge and suffer
variously.

CHAPTER II

AT THE BRITISH FRONT

LADYSMITH, NATAL, _Wednesday, October 11, 1899_.

Ladysmith breathes freely to-day, but a week ago she seemed likely to
become another Lucknow. Of line battalions only the Liverpools were
here, besides two batteries of field artillery, some of the 18th
Hussars