Traitor. Lit., Hands upper--_i.e._, surrendered man.

[10] The Boers speak of all British soldiers as Kharkis.

[11] Store.

[12] Lord Kitchener is commonly spoken of as "K." in South Africa.

III.

BEE-LINE TO BRITSTOWN.

"Not bad for a green crush."

The brigadier sat down on the edge of a great slab of rock to watch
the baggage over the nek. It was a typical South African nek. An
execrable path winding over the saddle of a low range of tumbled
ironstone. Just one of those ranges which force themselves with sheer
effrontery out from the level of the plain. Loose sugar-loaf
excrescences which stud the sea of prairie with a thousand flat-topped
islets, and weave the monotony of landscape peculiar to this great
continent. The rough post-cart track led down into a vast
amphitheatre, so vast that Western Europe can furnish no parallel to
it. Yet its counterparts are met and traversed every day by the
countless British columns now slowly darning the gaping rent in
Africa's robe of peace. Who, if they had not known, would have said
that the beautiful panorama, which the morning sun now unveiled before
us, was a theatre of war? Away at our feet stretched mile upon mile of
rolling Karoo and blue-grey prairie. True it was punctuated and ribbed
with stunted kopjes. But still the everlasting plain predominated,
until it was lost in an autumn haze which no sun could master.
Immense,--a land without a horizon, a land every characteristic of
which inspires a sense of independence and freedom. A sensation--an
intoxication, to be felt, not to be described. Why should men fight in
a land such as this? Surely there is room for all! The very animals of
the field, ignorant of the selfishness bred of a limited pasturage and
restricted space, are docile and free of vice. But with man it is
different.

The dweller on the open plain learns freedom. The lesson of cramped
cities is avarice--that the fittest may survive. Who shall blend the
two? There, as we stood with our loins girt for war, did that great
peaceful prairie unfold before us. As the morning sun grew stronger,
the everlasting grey of the Karoo became jewelled with brighter tints.
The middle distance of the plain was spangled with a streak of winding
silver. A river tracing its erratic course between the kopje islets.
At intervals along its banks the eye rested upon the patches of darker
green. The home plantation of some farm, glimpses of whose whitewashed
walls