pictures),
and dream over things one has seen and done, many of which seem already
such ages ago, and listen to the bugle calls that sound at intervals in
the camp. I have managed to buy some pyjamas. Probably you would see
something very ludicrous in the way in which, after an elaborate
hot-bath and hair-cutting, dressed out in one's clean pyjamas and lying
between clean sheets, one rolls one's eyes with unutterable complacency
on one's surroundings. All our comforts are attended to. We have a
shell-proof shelter in a ravine close by, handy in case of visits from
De Wet; and the two great cow-guns, like guardian angels, doze on the
top of the hill behind the hospital. Under the shadow of their wing I
always feel perfectly safe.

From patients who come in daily from various parts of the country and
various columns we get a general impression of how things are going.
The army seems to be adopting very severe measures to try and end the
campaign out of hand, and the papers at home are loudly calling for such
measures, I see, and justifying them. Nevertheless, it is childish to
pretend that it is a crime in the Boers to continue fighting, or that
they have done anything to disentitle them to the usages of civilised
warfare. The various columns that are now marching about the country are
carrying on the work of destruction pretty indiscriminately, and we have
burnt and destroyed by now many scores of farms. Ruin, with great
hardship and want, which may ultimately border on starvation, must be
the result to many families. These measures are not likely, I am afraid,
to conduce much to the united South Africa we talk so much of and
thought we were fighting for.

I had to go myself the other day, at the General's bidding, to burn a
farm near the line of march. We got to the place, and I gave the
inmates, three women and some children, ten minutes to clear their
clothes and things out of the house, and my men then fetched bundles of
straw and we proceeded to burn it down. The old grandmother was very
angry. She told me that, though I was making a fine blaze now, it was
nothing compared to the flames that I myself should be consumed in
hereafter. Most of them, however, were too miserable to curse. The women
cried and the children stood by holding on to them and looking with
large frightened eyes at the burning house. They won't forget that
sight, I'll bet a sovereign, not even when they grow up. We rode away
and left them, a fo