ching
tools, farriers with anvils, major-generals, mapmakers, "gallopers,"
intelligence departments, even biographs and press-censors; every kind of
thing and every kind of man that goes to make up a British army corps. I
knew that seven miles from us just such another completely equipped and
disciplined column was advancing to the opposite bank of the Sand River.

And opposed to it was this merry company of Boer farmers lying on the
grass, toasting pieces of freshly killed ox on the end of a stick, their
hobbled ponies foraging for themselves a half-mile away, a thousand men
without a tent among them, without a field-glass.

It was a picnic, a pastoral scene, not a scene of war. On the hills
overlooking the drift were the guns, but down along the banks the
burghers were sitting in circles singing the evening hymns, many of them
sung to the tunes familiar in the service of the Episcopal Church, so
that it sounded like a Sunday evening in the country at home. At the
drift other burghers were watering the oxen, bathing and washing in the
cold river; around the camp-fires others were smoking luxuriously, with
their saddles for pillows. The evening breeze brought the sweet smell of
burning wood, a haze of smoke from many fires, the lazy hum of hundreds
of voices rising in the open air, the neighing of many horses, and the
swift soothing rush of the river.

When morning came to Cronje's farm it brought with it no warning nor sign
of battle. We began to believe that the British army was an invention of
the enemy's. So we cooked bacon and fed the doves, and smoked on the
veranda, moving our chairs around it with the sun, and argued as to
whether we should stay where we were or go on to the bridge. At noon it
was evident there would be no fight at the drift that day, so we started
along the bank of the river, with the idea of reaching the bridge before
nightfall. The trail lay on the English side of the river, so that we
were in constant concern lest our white-hooded Cape cart would be seen by
some of their scouts and we would be taken prisoners and forced to travel
all the way back to Cape Town. We saw many herds of deer, but no scouts
or lancers, and, such being the effect of many kopjes, lost all ideas as
to where we were. We knew we were bearing steadily south toward Lord
Roberts, who as we later learned, was then some three miles distant.

About two o'clock his guns opened on our left, so we at least knew that