With Rimington | Page 4

horizon, cut
hard and blue against the sky like the mighty pylons and propylons of
Egyptian temples, the architectural character of the scenery and its
definite meaning and purpose strike one most inevitably. So solemn
and sad it looks; the endless plains bare and vacant, and the groups of
pure cut battlements and towers. As if some colossals here inhabited at
one time and built these remains among which we now creep ignorant
of their true character. The scenery really needs such a race of Titans to
match it. In these spaces we little fellows are lost.
Well, farewell. My next will be after some sort of a contest. There has
been a touch or two; enough to show they are waiting for us. A corporal
of ours was shot through the arm yesterday and struggled back to camp
on another man's horse. The dark-soaked sleeve (war's colour for the
first time of seeing!) was the object, you may guess, of particular
attention.

LETTER II
BELMONT
BELMONT SIDING.
It is to be called Belmont, I believe, from the little siding on the railway
near which it was fought. On the other hand it may be called after the
farm which it was fought on. Who decides these things? I have never
had dealings with a battle in its callow and unbaptized days before, and
it had never occurred to me that they did not come into the world ready
christened. Will Methuen decide the point, or the war correspondents,
or will they hold a cabinet council about it? Anyhow Belmont will do
for the present.
What happened was the simplest thing in the world. The Boers took up
their position in some kopjes in our line of march. The British infantry,
without bothering to wait till the hills had been shelled, walked up and
kicked the Boers out. There was no attempt at any plan or scheme of
action at all; no beastly strategy, or tactics, or outlandish tricks of any
sort; nothing but an honest, straightforward British march up to a row
of waiting rifles. Our loss was about 250 killed and wounded. The Boer
loss, though the extent of it is unknown, was probably comparatively

slight, as they got away before our infantry came fairly into touch with
them. The action is described as a victory, and so, in a sense, it is; but it
is not the sort of victory we should like to have every day of the week.
We carried the position, but they hit us hardest. On the whole, probably
both sides are fairly satisfied, which must be rare in battles and is very
gratifying.
Our mounted men, Guides, 9th Lancers, and a few Mounted Infantry,
marched out an hour before dawn. A line of kopjes stood up before us,
rising out of the bare plain like islands out of the sea, and as we
rounded the point and opened up the inner semicircle of hills, we could
distinguish the white waggon tops of the Boer laager in a deep niche in
the hillside, and see the men collecting and mounting and galloping
about. By-and-by, as we advanced, there came a singing noise, and
suddenly a great pillar of red dust shot up out of the ground a little to
our left. "That's a most extraordinary thing," thinks I, deeply interested,
"what land whale of these plains blows sand up in that fashion?" Then I
saw several heads turned in that direction, and heard some one say
something about a shell, and finally I succeeded in grasping, not
without a thrill, the meaning of the phenomenon.
The infantry attack came off on the opposite side of the ridge from
where we were, and we could see nothing of it. But we heard. As we
drew alongside of the hills, suddenly there broke out a low, quickly
uttered sound; dull reports so rapid as to make a rippling noise. The day
was beautifully fine, still, and hot. There was no smoke or movement
of any kind along the rocky hill crest, and yet the whole place was
throbbing with Mausers. This was the first time that any of us had
listened to modern rifle fire. It was delivered at our infantry, who on
that side were closing with their enemy.
The fire did not last long, though in the short time it did terrible
damage, and men of the Northumberlands and Grenadiers and
Coldstreams were dropping fast as they clambered up the rocky hillside.
But that brief burst of firing was the battle of Belmont. In that little
space of time the position had been lost and won, and we had paid our
price for it. During the march across the flat, as I have been told since,
our loss was comparatively light; but when