ured the Boers would make their most determined stand; and the
natural strength of the position, together with the urgent necessities
of the case, made such an expectation more than merely reasonable. Yet
to our delighted wonderment not a single trench, so far as we could
see, had been dug, nor a solitary piece of artillery placed in
position. From the top of a cinder heap a few farewell mauser bullets
were fired at our scouts, and then as usual our foemen fled. Once in a
Dutch deserted wayside house I picked up an "English Reader," which
strangely opened on Montgomery's familiar lines:--

"There is a land of every land the pride;
Belov'd by Heaven o'er all the world beside.
Where shall that land, that spot of earth be found?

Art thou a Man, a Patriot? Look around!
Oh thou shalt find, howe'er thy footsteps roam,
That land thy country, and that spot thy home!"

Boer patriotism we had supposed to be not merely pronounced, but
fiercely passionate; and "a Dutchman," said Penn, "is never so
dangerous as when he is desperate"; yet when the Guards' Brigade
stepped out of the newly-conquered Free State into the about to be
conquered Transvaal, scarcely a solitary Dutchman appeared upon the
scene to dispute our passage, or to strike one desperate blow for
hearth and altar and independence. In successive batches we were
peacefully hauled across the river on a pontoon ferry bridge; and as I
leaped ashore it was with a glad hurrah upon my lips; a grateful
hallelujah in my heart!

CHAPTER VI

A CHAPTER ABOUT CHAPLAINS

Whilst our narrative pauses for a while beside the Vaal which served
as a boundary between the two Republics, it may be well to devote one
chapter to a further description of the work of the chaplains with
whom in those two Republics I was brought into more or less close
official relationship. Concerning the chaplains of other Churches
whose work I witnessed, it does not behove me to speak in detail; I
can but sum up my estimate of their worth by saying concerning each,
what was said concerning a certain Old Testament servant of
Jehovah:--"He was a faithful man and feared God above many."

Of Wesleyan acting-chaplains, devoting their whole time to work among
the troops, and for the most part accompanying them from place to
place, there were eight; and to the labours of three of them--the
Welsh, the Australian and the Canadian--reference has a