Marquis of Winchester, who a fortnight ago invited me to conduct the
funeral of his friend, Colonel Stopford. To-day I visited the two
graves side by side in the same war-wasted garden, and thought of the
tearful Christmas awaiting thousands in the mountains.'


=Mr. Robertson at Magersfontein.=

Add to this pathetic statement the following letter from the Rev. James
Robertson, read by Principal Story to the General Assembly of the Church
of Scotland on May 25, 1900. The letter was dated Bloemfontein, April
12:--

'I have already buried over 400 men, killed in action or who died
of wounds or disease; and our hospitals are full of enteric cases,
day by day swelling the total. It goes without saying that--at
Magersfontein especially, all alone, no one being allowed with
me--it was terribly trying work collecting, identifying, and
burying our dead, so many of whom were my own personal friends; but
I experienced more than I ever did before how the hour of one's
conscious weakness may become the hour of one's greatest strength.
Of General Wauchope I won't write further than to say that I was
beside him when he fell. I think he wished me to keep near him, but
I got knocked down, and in the dark and wild confusion I was borne
away, and did not see him again in life, though I spared no effort
to find him, in the hope that he might be only wounded. As one of
the correspondents wrote of him, he was a man of God, and a man
among men--a fitting epithet. Not to mention other warm friends, in
my own mess (General Wauchope's) there were seven of us on
December 18; when next we sat down there were only two. We were a