e (cow-boy) he led at home, and wished he
could have our company at a "rounding-up," it was rare fun.

* * * * *

"Now, then, turn out, and get everything packed on the waggons at once,
and fall in in marching order!" How would you like to be awakened out of
a comfortable sleep at 3 a.m. in the above manner? Still, we are pretty
well accustomed to that sort of thing by now. Having fulfilled the above
injunctions, we stood to arms for about three hours and were then
dismissed. Some of us, I being one, were told off for the outlying
picket we are now doing. _Just_ as dinner was served up, we had to fall
in and march off, so, despite a ravenous appetite, I had to throw the
contents of my pannikin, which I had just filled, away, and with
smothered curses on the usual "messing about" which the Imperial Yeoman
always has to suffer, fell in and marched away. When we reached this
place at about five o'clock, we found that, owing to the usual somebody
blundering, sufficient rations had not been put on the waggons for us.
The men we relieved seemed very unhappy and were delighted to hear they
were to go back. They had had one or two alarms, and had to retire on a
fort one night. Almost immediately we were sent off to our kopjes, where
we spend our nights. The kopjes round here are really horrible things:
to ascend and descend them one requires legs of flexible iron, and the
amiability and patience of Job. At night one has to pick and choose a
little, before getting a satisfactory "doss." To arrange your couch you
must, of course, remove all the movable stones, and as regards the
fixtures it is strange how in a short time one's body seems
instinctively to accommodate itself to the undulations of the chosen
sleeping ground. It is strange also how a rock with a few handfuls of
grass makes a fairly decent pillow.

Near here there are numerous orange groves lying in the shelter of the
kopjes. Yesterday I had charge of a Dutchman who wanted to go through
the Nek on business, and on the off chance I went provided with a
nosebag. I came across a magnificent orange grove, owned, as it proved,
by an Englishman who had been, he told me, out here for twenty-five
years. This Englishman sent one of his sons off to fill my bag with the
best oranges, and another to fill my red handkerchief with mealie meal
to make porridge with. The red-handkerchief-with-white-spots alluded to
above is the last "wipe" I have left