would have opened your eyes with
amazement if you could have sat on the slopes of the Houwater drift
with the staff of the New Cavalry Brigade and watched the arrival of
the co-operating columns to their common camping-ground. First came
two squadrons of Scarlet Lancers, forming the nucleus of somebody's
mobile column. No one would have accused them of being Lancers if they
had met them suddenly on the veldt. Helmets they had none. How much
time and money and thought has been spent over the service headgear
for our men! We have seen it adapted for this climate; altered to suit
that; a peak here, a bandage there. But Thomas is the best judge of
the helmet in which he prefers to campaign, and you may rest assured
that he will choose the most comfortable, if not the most suitable.
The Scarlet Lancers had been separated from their helmets for many
months. In fact, the manner in which the gay cavalry man rids himself
of his legitimate headgear and provides himself with a substitute
rather smacks of the supernatural: for instance, our own 20th Dragoon
Guards had not been in the country more than ten days, yet there was
barely a helmet to be seen amongst them. Substitutes had been found
somewhere. The more worn and disreputable the substitute the happier
the owner, despite the fact that all his past glories centred round a
shining helmet or jaunty lancer cap, irresistible in plume and polish.
But it was a great spectacle to see the survival of the fittest
squadrons of the Scarlet Lancers filing past. There are half a dozen
Cavalry Regiments against whom no one could throw a stone--the 9th and
16th Lancers are of these. But it would be invidious to particularise
too much.

"Who the h--ll are these fellows?--are they tame Boers?" chirped a
subaltern from the 20th, who for the day was galloper to the
brigadier.

A bearded ruffian, whose only costume was a flannel shirt and a pair
of seedy check trousers, but whose eye was as keen as a hawk's, and
whose shining "matchlock" had seventeen notches[24] along its stock,
caught the subaltern's query.

"Yuss," came the answer, "we are tame Boers, the very tamest. My pal
'ere is President Kroojer, this 'ere's Botter, and hi am De--e--Wet!"

Cheery fellows; after fifteen months of war there was little about
self-preservation that you could have taught them. Lean, sinewy, and
bearded kind--they represented the English fighting man at his best.
And well might the inexperienced have aske