MAFEKING

299 pages, 14 illustrations from sketches by war artists, sketch plan, pictorial red cloth, top edge gilt, edges uncut, new endpapers.  

A facsimile of Mafeking Mail Special Siege Slip No. 34 of Monday 18th December 1899 has been expertly lined with rice paper and mounted in a pocket on the back paste-down endpaper. 

Mendelssohn ( Sidney) South African Bibliography, volume 1, page 67: ‘The contents of this volume appeared, from time to time, in the columns of the Morning Post, and the sketches supplementing the diary are taken from the Daily Graphic. The author was stationed at Mafeking some little time before the war, evidently to organise the defences of the town, but little had been done before the outbreak of hostilities, " owing to the repressive policy of the Bond Ministry " at the the town was complete by the 19th of October (1899), the Boers surrounding the place being estimated at six thousand. There is an interesting account of the siege from day to day, with a description of the sorties, and the attempts at storming, on the part of the Boers. Baden-Powell's letters to General Snyman and to the burghers are inserted: in the former, he protests at the treatment of Lady Sarah Wilson as a prisoner of war, and states that he only exchange the convict P. Viljoen for her under protest. The cannon used by the besieged seem to have been a curious mixture of modern and ancient weapons, one of them being an old gun formerly belonging to one of Admiral Nelson's ships, which was unearthed to use in the siege. It is stated that, "with smokeless powder and khaki clothing, the firing line, even at short ranges, is invisible as a target."’