Mafeking. A Diary of the Siege

A volume in Constable\'s Indian and Colonial Library. Crown 8vo; original red cloth, lettered in black on spine and upper cover; publisher\'s advertisements printed on endpapers; pp. 299; illustrations after those in The Daily Graphic. Spine sunned, a little cocked, and a little frayed at head and tail; blotch to top edge of lower cover; earlier owner\'s book label to front pastedown; edges foxed; sporadic foxing throughout; fragile, folding \'Special Siege Slip\' of \'The Mafeking Mail\' present, though very browned, with offset. (Hackett, p. 128; Mendelssohn I, p. 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 Cape. The investment of 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 exchanged 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.\"\' - Mendelssohn.