ter flows
secretly on into more peaceful scenes.

GUNNING'S FARM, _Saturday, May 5th_.

We did not get away until nearly nine yesterday morning, and for the
first few miles were much delayed by breakdowns in the transport column.
The transport mule is a troublesome creature; sometimes he insists on
stopping to pick up grass; always he is reluctant to do merely what is
required of him. So although our transport column is supposed to take up
only one mile of road, it straggled over a good two miles during
Friday's march. The road was very dangerous, winding through narrow
passes and thick bush country; therefore the scouting was slow and
laborious, and the whole column was halted before every unusually
dangerous place. But we met no Boers; and since we desire to proceed
very quietly and unostentatiously at first this was fortunate. The
column consists of about eleven hundred men of the Kimberley Mounted
Corps and the Imperial Light Horse, a mixed company of picked volunteers
from the Sixth Fusilier Brigade (representing England, Ireland,
Scotland, and Wales), and a four-gun battery of the Royal Horse
Artillery, with two pom-poms in addition. Every man is mounted,
including the infantry men, who ride on waggons. Yesterday we marched
only twelve miles, owing to the difficulties of the ground, but in the
evening our business began in earnest. Lights had to be out at eight
o'clock, and this morning we marched off at two, no lights or fires
being allowed, not even a match for a cigarette. The joys of rising at
1.30 in the cold pitch darkness (for these are winter mornings, in spite
of the summer noonday), and of trying to harness a team, and pick up all
one's kit, exist only in retrospect, where all troubles fade. The
six-hour march this morning was very cold and very tedious; four hours
of it were in darkness, and how late the sun seemed to be in rising! But
he came punctually, in spite of a mild panic amongst us lest something
should have happened to him, and the pageant of his rising was
entertainment for the last two hours. Fifteen miles before breakfast and
fifteen after lunch--a journey almost too heavy for the second day. Two
teams of mules were knocked up, and more will follow if this goes on.

At Spitz Kop, our breakfast outspan, we heard guns in the distance, and
from the top of the high hill we could see the little fluffy clouds of
smoke, that meant so much to someone, bursting on both sides. There was
an alarm