r dressing as
they reached the flat. Some one sang out, "When under fire wear a
cheerful face;" and the men laughingly passed the word along, "When
under fire wear a cheerful face."

LETTER XVIII

PRETORIA

PRETORIA, _June 6_, 1900.

It is generally considered rather a coup in war, I believe, to take the
enemy's capital, isn't it? like taking a queen at chess. We keep on
taking capitals, but I can't say it seems to make much difference. The
Boers set no store by them apparently; neither Bloemfontein nor Pretoria
have been seriously defended, and they go on fighting after their loss
just as if nothing had happened.

For months Pretoria has been our beacon, and at first it seemed quite an
impossibly long way off. Looked at from Bloemfontein, across 300 miles
of dreary veldt and rugged kopjes and steep-banked rivers, and allowing
for the machinations and devilments of ten or fifteen thousand Boers,
our arrival here did seem a vague, indefinite, and far-off prospect. And
yet in a day or two over the month here we are. Lord Roberts has brought
us up in the most masterly way. He has moved with a big central column
on the railway, while at the same time other columns, stretched far to
right and left, moved parallel and threatened to outflank and enclose
the enemy at every stand. So with wings beating and body steadily
advancing, like some great kite or bird of prey, we have flapped our way
northward.

Even here no stand was made. The town is strongly defended with several
new forts, armed, we were told, with 10-inch guns, with a range of about
twelve miles, which we supposed would put the noses of our poor cow-guns
completely out of joint. The Boers had burnt the grass on all the hills
to the south of the town, so that the blackened surface might show up
the khaki uniform of our men, and offer a satisfactory mark, and things
generally, as we slowly approached the tall black rampart of mountain
south of Pretoria, seemed to point to a big engagement. But here, as so
often elsewhere, it was borne in upon them that if they finally stayed
and defended their capital, they would assuredly be surrounded and cut
off; and so, though only at the last moment, we hear, they decided to
leave. They put up an afternoon fight on the hills near the town, but
this was only the work of a handful of men, probably intended to stave
us off for a while while they finished their packing in Pretoria and got
away. Lord Roberts got a batt