or, apart from the question of sharks, the distance to the beach was
considerable.

On land the whole aspect of the streets was changed. Every few yards one
met men in khaki and putties. This cloth looks fairly smart when it is
new and the buttons and badges are burnished; but, after a very few
weeks at the front, khaki uniforms become as shabby as possible. No one
who is going into the firing line has any wish to draw the enemy's fire
by the glint of his buttons or his shoulder-badges, and so these are
either removed or left to tarnish. Nor does khaki--at any rate the
"drill" variety--improve its beauty by being washed. When one has
bargained with a Kaffir lady to wash one's suit for ninepence it comes
back with all the glory of its russet brown departed and a sort of limp,
anaemic look about it. And when the wearer has lain upon the veldt at
full length for long hours together in rain and sun and dust-storm his
kit assumes an inexpressible dowdiness, and preserves only its one
superlative merit of so far resembling mother earth that even the keen
eyes behind the Mauser barrels fail to spot Mr. Atkins as he lies prone
behind his stone or anthill.

As our lumbering cab drove up Adderley Street to the hotel a squadron of
the newly raised South African Light Horse rode past. The men looked
very jaunty and well set up with their neat uniforms, bandoliers and
"smasher" hats with black cocks' feathers. There has never been the
slightest difficulty in raising these irregular bodies of mounted
infantry. The doors of their office in Atkinson's Buildings were
besieged by a crowd of applicants--very many of them young men who had
arrived from England for the purpose of joining. A certain amount of
perfectly good-humoured banter was levelled against these brand-new
soldiers by their friends, and some fun poked at them about their
riding. Occasionally, for instance, a few troopers were unhorsed during
parade and the riderless steeds trotted along the public road at
Rosebank. But certainly the tests of horsemanship were severe. Many of
the horses supplied by Government were very wild and sometimes behaved
like professional buckjumpers; and it is no easy task to control the
eccentric and unexpected gyrations of such a beast when the rider is
encumbered with the management of a heavy Lee-Metford rifle. Since the
day on which I first saw the squadron in question it has passed through
its baptism of fire at Colenso. The Light Horse adv