Among the convoy was a Red Cross ambulance waggon filled with rifles and a small quantity of ammunition.  The Boers unloaded the waggon and then informed the physician in charge of it that he might proceed and rejoin the column to which he had been attached.  The physician declined to move and explained his action by saying that he had violated the rules of the International Red Cross and would therefore consider himself and his assistants prisoners of war.  General Christian De Wet would not accept them as prisoners and trekked southward, leaving them behind to rejoin the British column several days afterward.

[Illustration:  FIRST BRITISH PRISONERS OF WAR CAPTURED NEAR DUNDEE]

During the war it was continually charged by both combatants that dum-dum bullets were being used, and undoubtedly there was ample foundation for the charges.  Both Boers and British used that particular kind of expansive bullet notwithstanding all the denials that were made in newspapers and orations.  After the battle of Pieter’s Hills, on February 28th, Dr. Krieger, General Meyer’s Staff Physician, went into General Sir Charles Warren’s camp for the purpose of exchanging wounded prisoners.  After the interchange of prisoners had been accomplished General Warren produced a dum-dum bullet which had been found on a dead Boer’s body and, showing it to Dr. Krieger, asked him why the Boers used the variety of cartridge that was not sanctioned by the rules of civilised warfare.  Dr. Krieger took the cartridge in his hand and, after examining it, returned it to Sir Charles with the remark that it was a British Lee-Metford dum-dum.  General Warren seemed to be greatly nonplussed when several of his officers confirmed the physician’s statement and informed him that a large stock of dum-dum cartridges had been captured by the Boers at Dundee.  It is an undeniable fact that the Boers captured thousands of rounds of dum-dum cartridges which bore the “broad arrow” of the British army, and used them in subsequent battles.  It was stated in Pretoria that the Boers had a small stock of dum-dum ammunition, which was not sent to the burghers at the front at the request of President Kruger, who strongly opposed the use of an expansive bullet in warfare.  It was an easy matter, however, for the Boers to convert their ordinary Mauser cartridges into dum-dum by simply cutting off the point of the bullet, and this was occasionally done.

One of the pluckiest men in the Boer army was Arthur Donnelly, a young Irish American from San Francisco, who served in the Pretoria detective force for several years, and went to the war in one of the commandos under General Cronje.  At the battle of Koodoesberg Donnelly and Captain Higgins, of the Duke of Cornwall’s regiment, both lay behind ant-heaps, several hundred yards apart, and engaged in a duel with carbines for almost an hour.  After Donnelly had fired seventeen shots Captain Higgins was fatally wounded by a bullet,