country would show something of the
Arab character, sensitive, fiery, and high strung. Yet nothing can be
conceived less Arab like than your stolid but practical Dutchman and the
underbred screw he rides.

Left and right of you, your two or three flankers, half a mile off, have
halted, in obedience to your halting, and are standing by their horses'
heads scanning the country. Under the kopje your main body are sitting
about, while their ponies, with bridles thrown over their heads, graze.
Far back, two or three miles, the bits of dark kilt showing behind their
khaki aprons, a company of the Camerons comes into view, the brown
colour so exactly matching the plain that they are first visible only by
their motion. Here come the flank guards, sprinkled far out over the
country. And now, at the point where the distant kopjes slope to the
plain, the air grows heavy with dust-wreaths, rising like steam from a
cauldron, and underneath, slowly emerging, comes something dark and
solid. It is the head of the column. The great caterpillar is crawling
forward. You must push on--"Stand to your horses!"

LETTER XX

PRINSLOO'S SURRENDER--I

CAMP, NEAR FOURIESBERG, _July 26_, 1900.

We have a whole day of peace and rest before us--very welcome after the
hard fighting we have been doing lately. This lull is to allow
Bruce-Hamilton and Macdonald to stop the exits at the eastern end of the
valley. We don't want to push the enemy east till we are sure the passes
in that direction have been secured. Some of us are annoyed at the
delay. We were in touch with the enemy this morning, our scouts and
advance guard exchanging shots with their rearguard. We could see them
prancing about on the bare hills east of Fouriesberg, and making off in
a leisurely way up the eastern valley, and most of us were quite
expecting that we should give chase immediately.

Hunter rode forward to have a look. He watched the tiny horsemen
hovering on the hills or cantering away; then back he came with a quiet
smile on his face, and instead of ordering the advance, as the impetuous
ones expected, he led his column back over the way we had come for
several miles, and then camped.

So here we are, sitting or lying about, sleeping, smoking, or reading.
Our camp is in a small plain, five or six miles from Fouriesberg,
surrounded by ranges of great hills. Those south and east, their gaunt
peaks rising, streaked with white, above the lower and nearer ones, a