amp the dust lies thick and heavy. Every breeze that
blows lifts clouds of it, that hang in the air like a dense London fog,
and mark the site of the camp miles and miles away. The river, more
muddy than ever, moves languidly in its deep channel. There is a Boer
laager some miles above the camp, the scourings of which--horrid
thought!--are constantly brought down to us. The soldiers eye the
infected current askance and call it _Boervril_. Its effect is seen in
the sickness that is steadily increasing.

Thank goodness we escape it. An advantage of scouting is, that, when it
comes to a standing camp, with its attendant evils of dirt, smells, and
sickness, your business carries you away, in front, or out along the
flanks, where you play at hide-and-seek with the enemy, trap and are
trapped, chase and are chased, and where you bivouac healthily and
pleasantly, if not in such full security, at some old Dutch farm, where
probably fowls are to be bought, or milk and butter; or under groups of
mimosa trees among stoney deserted kopjes, where there is plenty of wood
for burning, as likely as not within reach of some old garden with figs
in it ripening and grapes already ripe.

One of the little pictures I shall remember belonging to Modder camp is
the sight of the soldiers at early mass. You can picture to yourself a
wide, flat dusty plain held in the bent arm of the river, with not a
tree or bush on it; flat as a table, ankle-deep in grey dust, and with a
glaring, blazing sun looking down on it. The dust is so hot and deep
that it reminds one more of the ashes on the top of Vesuvius--you
remember that night climb of ours?--than of anything else.

Laid out in very formal and precise squares are the camps of the various
brigades, the sharp-pointed tents ranged in exact order and looking from
far off like symmetrical little flower-beds pricked out on the sombre
plain.

A stone's throw from the river is a mud wall, with a mud house at one
side scarcely rising above it, yet house and wall giving in the early
morning a patch of black shadow in the midst of the glare. Here the old
priest used to celebrate his mass. A hundred or two of Tommies and a few
officers would congregate here soon after sunrise, and stand bare-headed
till the beams looked over the wall, when helmet after helmet would go
on; or kneel together in the dust while the priest lifted the host.
Every man had his arms, the short bayonet bobbing on the hip; every
bro