anation but the true one, and attribute every kind of motive
save the only one that will explain the facts. They refuse to call the
Boers patriots, but that the Boers are prepared to face a slow
extermination in defence of their country is now evident. It has become
more evident since the war has assumed its present character of
individual, personal effort. I much respect and admire them for it.

It is time to bring this long letter to an end. I wish I could see an
end to the campaign. When I come home "an old, old, aged and infirm old
man," I mean to pass the evening of my days in a quiet cottage with its
full allowance of honeysuckle and roses. There I shall grow sweet
williams and, if I can stand the extra excitement, perhaps keep a pig.
They tell me the _Times_ has pronounced the war over. I would be glad to
pay L5 out of my own pocket to have the man who wrote that out here on
the veldt with us for a week. We have just heard that Dewetsdorp has
fallen, and that there is a rising in the Colony near Aliwal North.
_Vogue la galere!_

LETTER XXV

THE SITUATION

CAMP ON THE VAAL,
NEAR KLERKSDORP,
_December 23_, 1900.

We are encamped close to the Vaal, which is here a fine stream, as wide
as the Thames at Richmond. I have just been bathing in it. It is early
morning, and I am sitting under a thicket of great weeping willows by
the river. The banks slope down and make a trough for the stream a good
deal below the level of the plain, and in this hollow, hidden till you
are close to it, congregates all the verdure there is for miles,
especially a quantity of willow trees, with gnarled black trunks leaning
down to the stream, sometimes bending over and burying themselves in the
ground and then shooting up again, making arches and long vistas, with
green grass below and silvery foliage waving above. After our long
marches on the veldt, the contrast here is wonderfully refreshing. One
seems to drink in the coolness and greenness of the scene with eyes that
have grown thirsty for such things. The trees straddling down the bank
are rather like figures of men, giants that have flung themselves down,
resting on hands and elbows, delighted, one would think, as I am, to
come and rest near water again.

I can hardly believe that it only wants two days to Christmas. Our last
Christmas we spent on the Modder. I remember it well; a wet night, and
all night long we sat on a steep kopje watching the lights of a Boer