ve more or less succeeded, for the stone
shelters, though obviously dummies on close inspection, looked all right
at a distance. Besides, a definite mark always attracts fire. It was
characteristic of Boer cuteness.

LETTER XXII

FIGHTING AND TREKKING

HEILBRON, _August 17_.

We stayed several days among the mountains on the scene of the
surrender, collecting our prisoners and the waggons, guns, horses, &c.,
and sending them off to the railway. The valley, viewed from the hill
where we were camped, looked much like one of our West Country horse
fairs on a very large scale. The separate commandoes were herded
together in big groups of several hundred men, sitting and lying about
and talking. The ox-waggons and battered Cape-carts were drawn up
together in a great array; but the busiest part of it all was the
division of the horses into mobs fit or unfit for remounts, and the
distribution of them to the various regiments. Rimington superintended
this job. Of course, after all our marching, we were sadly in want of
remounts. The Boers had any number of horses, many of them bringing in
two or three apiece, and the majority were in good condition and fit for
work, probably owing to the fact that the grazing all about this side of
the Free State, especially among these mountains, is excellent. The
South African ponies, I may tell you, are the only satisfactory mounts
for South Africa. We have tried horses from all parts of the world now,
and they can none of them stand the climate, work, and food like the
native breeds. The South African pony, wretched little brute as he
looks, will tripple and amble on, week after week and month after month,
with a heavy man on his back, and nothing to eat but the pickings of
sour, dried-up veldt grass and an occasional handful of Indian corn; and
though you will eye him with an eye of scorn, no doubt (if he should
happen to be allotted to your use), and envy some other man his fat
Burmese or Argentine, yet by-and-by you will find out your mistake; for
the fat Burmese and the Argentine, and all the other imported breeds,
will gradually languish and fade away, and droop and die, worn down by
the unremitting work and the bad, insufficient food; but your ragged
little South African will still amble on, still hump himself for his
saddle in the morning, and still, whenever you dismount, poke about for
roots and fibres of withered grass as tough as himself, or make an
occasional heart