ome
permanent effect on one's mind and intellect. The last mail--that is to
say, the last news of any sort of the outside world--which we have
received was on April 27th before leaving Bloemfontein; three months
less a week since any whisper concerning events or people out of our
immediate sight has reached us. My ignorance of things in general weighs
on me. It is a taste of life in the dark ages before modern inventions
kept one in touch with the world.

During all this time we have been wandering like an army in a dream over
the unlimited surface of the veldt. The same programme is repeated day
by day. A little before dawn you hear through your blanket-folds the
first unwelcome "Saddle up," and the muttered curses in reply. You
unwind yourself with groans. A white-frost fog blots out everything at
fifty yards, and a white sugary frost encrusts the grass. These first
hours are piercingly cold, for it is now mid-winter with us. A cup of
water left overnight is frozen solid. You dress by simply drawing your
revolver-strap over your shoulder, and flinging your blanket round you,
make your way to where a couple of black boys are bending over the
beginnings of a fire, and to which several other blanketed and shivering
figures are converging with the same thought--_coffee_--in every mind.

Then the great army column that has curled itself up like a caterpillar
for the night begins slowly to uncurl. On the march our huge convoy
stretches out in line, waggon following waggon along the rude track, and
extending to a length of nearly ten miles. At night, of course, it
collects (parks is the proper word) at some selected spot where the
ground is favourable, and where in the shape of a sluit, river, or
farm-dam there is water. On the slopes and hills around infantry pickets
are set, while the convoy and main camp are massed in the hollow
beneath. You must not think of our _camp_ in the English sense of the
word. We have no tents. The men sleep tightly rolled in greatcoat and
blanket, stretched on the bare earth, with saddles for pillows. If
anything takes you about the camp at night, you might think you were
walking among thick strewn corpses after a fearful carnage, so stiff and
still the frosted bodies lie on the ground.

Now the great creature wakes for its next crawl. First its antennae, or
long feelers, are pushed out in front. Its scouts, that is, among which,
if you belong to our corps, you will probably find yourself, go