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Show BULLER ALMOST WEPT. Claimed His Brigadiers Sold Him at Tugela River Disaster. Chicago, Feb. 13. A special to the I Record from Victoria. B. C, says: A letter received by Mrs. A. A. Humphreys Humph-reys of this city from a captain of a border regiment, since wounded at Spion Kop. gives a graphic description of the loss of the British guns at the I Tugela river. The letter was dated at Frere. Dec. 21, and in part says: "People hardly realize yet what a big undertaking this is turning out to be. Everything points to the Boers having not less than 60,000 men in the field, with guns superior to ours in range and little behind us in marksmanship, marks-manship, and until we get out a lot more troops there is no likelihood of our Soing much more than hold them in rheck. "They are undoubtedly following out a. plan of campaign which they have worked out in all details in peace times, and they are carrying it out most perfectly. per-fectly. They have spies everywhere, and are always prepared to meet any move on our part almost before we've begun. We are exactly the reverse and never seem to know what they are doing do-ing nor how many there are of them in any direction. We won't trust a single sin-gle colonial (Cape Colonist). "We have a first-class topographical map of the frontier, but no military map of these parts and no one knows which hill commands another, or what kinds of positions there are on the other side of the mountains facing us. We are exactly like the French in the Franco-German war, with excellent maps of the enemy's country, but with none of our own. The Boer positions are on all the hig'h ridges and hills. They extend for miles and command every bit of ground in front. "The hills behind are prepared for defense. de-fense. If they are driven back from one position they don't have to go very far to get behind a new line of resistance. resist-ance. Water is far from plentiful and the transports scarce, so we have to suck, pretty wen 10 ene ranwaj. ium-r has a hard nut to crack in the Boer po-' po-' sition in front of us Colenso hills de-' de-' fending the river Tugela. which we ' must cross, and which is only fordable ' in places few and far between. "We tried to do so last Friday and had a battle. We were 20,000 strong, 1 and the Boers between 10,000 and 14,000. Our brigade, Fifth, attacked on the left, but our brigadier made an awful ' mes3 of it and Buller ordered him to ! withdraw, which we did, after 532 were killed and wounded. "Something went wrong with the right brigade, and the officer commanding command-ing the Royal artillery advanced his . guns up to within 700 yards of the Boer position and trenches long before i the infantry were at hand to support j him. The Boers allowed the guns to i be un.Jmbered and then poured such a j hail of bullets that the teams of two, batteries were killed in a very short time. When the gunners were shot down the attack could not be carried out, and Buller had to give the order to j retire and ten guns had to be aban- doned. Our total loss was 1,147, and all j for nothing. "Buller almost wept and was heard to ' exclaim: 'My brigadiers have sold- me.' "We shall have another division here J shortly',: and will then have 30,000 men. i and as the' Boers have been receiving' reinforcements they will number not ; far from 20.000, ..and all in splendid po- sitions. The shrieking and bursting of i shells and the roar of battle and the thousands of Mausers, Lee-Metfords j and Maxims last Friday was something 1 awful. The heat, too, was dreadful, but j the men behaved splendidly." j |