and shell can do to poor, soft, human flesh. I saw soldiers who had
helped to do the work turn from those trenches shaking.




LETTER V

THE FOUR POINT SEVEN


MODDER RIVER CAMP,

_December_ 1899.

A few days ago we welcomed a distinguished stranger here in the shape of
a long 4.7 naval gun. They set him up in the road just outside the
station, with his flat-hatted sailors in zealous attendance, where he
held a day-long levée. The gun is a remarkable object among the rest of
our artillery. Its barrel, immensely long but very slender, has a
well-bred, aristocratic look compared with the thick noses of our
field-guns. It drives its forty-five pound shell about seven miles, and
shoots, I am told, with perfect accuracy. It is an enlarged edition of
the beautiful little twelve-pounders which we have hitherto been using,
and which exceed the range of our fifteen-pounder field-guns by about a
half. Why should naval guns be so vastly superior to land ones?

I interviewed the sailors on the accomplishments of the new-comer, and
on the effects especially of lyddite, about which we hear so much. One
must allow for a little friendly exaggeration, but if the mixture of