THE SOUDAN WAR CORRESPONDENTS.

Waikato Times, Volume XXXI, Issue 2522, 8 September 1888, Page 2 (Supplement)

THE SOUDAN WAR CORRESPONDENTS.

Lord Wolselkv, speaking at the unveiling of the tablet erectcd in St. Paul's Cathedral to the memory of the war correspondents who perished in the Soudan, paid the following tribute lo their memory :—" Of the seven gentlemen to whose memory this tablet has been erected there were threo with whom I was not personally acquainted. Two of them, Mr O'Donovan and Mr Power, both countrymen of my own, fell victims in the earliest period of the Soudan campaign. The fir.it, as you know, shared the catastrophe of General Hick's army, and the second was cruelly and treacherously inurderjd, when he was, with Colonel Stewart, endeavouring to get out of Khartoum. Mr Roberts, a young man of great promise, fell u victim to the very bad climate of Suakim. Those three gentlemen have left hehind them a large circle of friends and relatives to whom their memory will always be dear, and be regarded with very great pride. The gentleman whom I knew longest was Mr V'izetelly. I met him a great number of years ago in Richmond, in the very height of the war between the North and South. Ho was a man of the most genial character, and he had, owing to his good nature and kindness of manner, collected around him in Virginia and Richmond, the capital of the State, a circle of acquaintances by whom he was esteemed, and I might almost say loved. I think that all those who remember the pages of the Illustrated London News of the period will bear me out when I say that he was also an artist of a very high order. Next comeß Mr Cameron, with whom, I am glad to Bay, I had the opportunity of being associated during mor6 than one campaign. I can see him now in my fancy, as I often saw him in 1882, galloping about that desert which lies between Ismalia and Tel-el-Kebir, hastening to the telegraph office as fast as his horse could carry him, in order that no one should forestall him in the news which he was anxious to send home to his employers in England. The last time I saw him waa in the Bayadn Desert, the day that memorable advance guard left Korti for Gubat, I can see him on the camel, eager, with his face pointed in the direction from which, I am sorry to say, he never returned ; but it must bo a great source of gratification to all who knew him, and to all who liked him, to remember that il he died by a bullet of the enemy he died in good company, He died in that square where so many brave, noble soldiers of the Queen also died, and where the leader of that advance, Sir Herbert Stewart, met his death wound. Captain Gordon I had known a long time, and I may say with all sincerity that I fouud him, as every one else did, a gentleman of the highest character. The last of the seven was a personal friend of my own, St. Leger Herbert. He had been my private secretary, first of all in Cyprus, afterwards in South Africa, and during one of the campaigns he took —I will not say a distinguished part, but a very active part indeed, and he showed upon that occasion, the first time ho went into action, that great danger and contempt for danger which characterised him throughout his life. He was a man of great ability and of high education ; a man whom it was impossible to know without being fond of, and I think I may say that, although I have had many brave comrades associated with n.o during my military career, no braver man ever served with me than St. Leger Herbert—no braver soldier's heart ever beat beneath the red jacket."