in the last ten days and were
heartily glad it was over. They exchanged nods and good-days with us and
the soldiers who were standing about, and altogether seemed in a very
friendly and conciliatory mood. All this, however, it struck me, was
rather put on, a bit of acting which was now and then a trifle overdone.
Boers are past-masters at hiding their real feelings and affecting any
that they think will be acceptable. It is a trait which has become a
national characteristic, and the craft, dissimulation, the _slimness_,
as it is called, of the Boers is a by-word. I suppose it comes from the
political situation, the close neighbourhood of a rival race, stronger
and more energetic, which fosters in the stolid Dutchman, by way of
buckler, this instinctive reticence and cunning. His one idea is to make
what he can out of the situation without troubling his head for a
moment about his own candour and sincerity. It is Oriental, the trait
you expect to find in a John Chinaman, but which surprises you in a
burly old Dutchman. Still there it is. At any farm you go to, men,
women, and children will put on a semblance of friendship, and set to
work to lie with a calmness which is really almost dignified. No one in
this country ever believes a thing a bit the more because a Dutchman
says it.

We went on into the captured laager. It was an extraordinary,
interesting, and loathsome sight. Dead bodies of horses and men lay in
all directions in various stages of decomposition, and the reeking smell
was something quite indescribable. I fancied, even after leaving the
place, that I carried the smell about with me, and that it had got into
my clothes. The steep river banks were honeycombed with little holes and
tunnels, and deep, narrow pits, like graves; narrow at the top, and
hollowed out below to allow less entrance for shells. Evidently each man
had cut his own little den. Some were done carelessly, mere pits scooped
out. Others were deep, with blankets or old shawls spread at the bottom,
and poles with screens of branches laid across the top to keep off the
sun. I saw one or two which were quite works of art; very narrow tunnels
cut into the side of the river-cliff, and turning round after you
entered, making a quite secure retreat, unless perhaps an extra heavy
old lyditte might happen to burst the whole bank up. This actually
happened, they told us, with the very last shot fired the night before;
a bit of the bank having been blown