This book has been reprinted, by kind permission of the Proprietors of
the _Daily Chronicle_, from the full text of the Letters sent to the
paper.




LADYSMITH

THE DIARY OF A SIEGE




CHAPTER I

ON THE EDGE


NEWCASTLE, NATAL, _Thursday, October 5, 1899_.

Late last Sunday night I found myself slowly crawling towards the front
from Pretoria in a commandeered train crammed full of armed Boers and
their horses. I had rushed from the Cape to quiet little Bloemfontein,
the centre of one of the best administered States in the world, where
the heads of the nation in the intervals of discussing war proudly
showed me their pianos, their little gardens, little libraries of
English books, little museums of African beasts and Greek coins, and all
their other evidences of advancing culture. Then on to Pretoria, the
same kind of a town on a larger and richer scale--trim bungalow houses,