Day after day we steadily worked our way down to Koomati Poort, even when climbing such terrific hills that we sometimes seemed like men toiling to the top of a seven-storied house in order to reach the cellar. Hence Monday morning found us still seemingly close to "The Devil's Kantoor," which we had reached on the previous Saturday, though meanwhile we had tramped up and down and in and out, till we could travel no farther, all day on Sunday.

[Sidenote: A Surrendered Boer General.]

During that Sunday tramp there crossed into our lines General Schoeman, driving in a Cape cart drawn by four mules, on his way to Pretoria via the Godwand River railway station. Months before he had joined in formally handing over Pretoria to the British, and had been allowed to return to his farm on taking the oath of neutrality. That oath he had refused to break, so he was made a prisoner by his brother Boers. It was in Barberton gaol General French found him and once more set him free. Such a man deemed himself safer in the hands of his foes than of his friends, so was hasting not to his farm but to far-off Pretoria. This favourite commandant was by the Boers called "King David," and not only in the authoritativeness of his tone, but also in the sharp diversities of his martial experiences, bore some not remote resemblance to his ancient namesake.

Far as either of us then was from foreseeing it, the general's path and mine, though just now so divergent, were destined to meet once more. Within a year in Pretoria on the following Whit-Sunday I was sitting in the house of a friend, and was startled, as all present were, by the firing, as we all supposed, of one of our huge 4.7 guns. Later in the day we learned it was the bursting of a 4.7 shell, nearly two miles away from where we heard the dread explosion. That particular British shell happened to be the first that had long ago been fired in the fight near Colesberg, and as it had fallen close to the general's tent without bursting, he brought it away to keep as a curio, and on that particular Sunday, so it is said, was showing it to a Boer friend, and explaining that the new explosive now used by the English is perfectly harmless when properly handled.

His demonstration, however, proved tragically inconclusive. Precisely what happened there is now no one left alive to tell. As in a moment the part of the house in which the experimenters sat was wrecked, and as I next day noted, some neighbouring houses were sorely damaged. The general was blown almost to pieces; one of his daughters who was sitting at the piano was fatally hurt. On the day of the general's funeral the general's friend died from the effect of the injuries received, and three other members of that family circle barely escaped with their lives.

On my first Whit-Tuesday in South Africa I marched with the triumphant Guards into Pretoria. On this second Whit-Tuesday I stood reverently beside the new-made grave of this famous Pretorian general, who had proved himself to be one of the best of the Boers, one of the few concerning whom it is commonly believed that his word was as good as his bond; and thus all strangely a shot ineffectually fired from one of our guns in Cape Colony, claimed eighteen months afterwards this whole group of victims in far-off Pretoria. Thus in the home of peace were so tragically let loose the horrors and havoc of war!

This general's case aptly illustrates one of the most debatable of all points in the conduct of this doubly lamentable struggle. Whilst those who were far away from the scene of operations denounced what they deemed the wanton barbarities of the British, those on the spot denounced almost as warmly what they deemed the foolish and cruel clemency by which the war was so needlessly prolonged. These local complainers asserted that if every surrendered burgher had been compelled to bring in not a rusty sporting rifle, but a good mauser, a good supply of cartridges and a good horse, the Boers would much sooner have reached the end of their resources. That saying is true. Our chiefs assumed they were dealing with only honourable men, and so in this matter let themselves be sorely befooled. Some who surrendered to them one week, were busy shooting at them the next, with rifles that had been buried instead of being given up; and among those who thus proved false to their plighted troth were, alas, ministers of the Dutch Reformed Church.

[Sidenote: Two Unworthy Predikants.]

When near the close of the war I paid a visit to Klerksdorp I was informed by absolutely reliable witnesses that one of the predikants of that neighbourhood had not been required to take an oath because of his sacred calling, and his simple word of honour was accepted. Yet at the time of my visit he was out on commando, harassing with his rifle the very village in which his own wife was still residing under our protection. Next day at Potchetstroom eye-witnesses told me that one of Cronje's chaplains, whom long ago we had set at liberty, soon after seized bandolier and rifle in defiance of all honour, and so a second time became a prisoner. "Straying shepherds, straying sheep!" When pastors thus proved unprincipled, their people might well hold perverted views as to what honour means and oaths involve.

It is further maintained by these protesters against excessive clemency that all surrendered burghers should have been placed in laagers, or sent to the coast on parole, where they could not have been compelled or tempted to take up arms again; but it was this express promise that they should return to their farms there personally to protect families and flocks and furniture, that induced them to come in. They would never have surrendered to be sent far afield, but would have remained in the fighting line to the finish. All was not gained that was hoped for by this generous policy, but it was not such an utter failure as some suppose; and it at least served to pacify public opinion. The experiment of dealing gently with surrendered foemen was fairly tried, and if in part it failed the fault was not ours!

At the latter end, when guerilla warfare became the order of the day, and the only end aimed at was not fighting, but the mere securing or destruction of food supplies, it became necessary to sweep the veldt as with a broom, and to bring within the British lines everybody still left and everybody's belongings; but even then it was a gigantic task, involving much wrecking of what could not be removed; and in the earlier stages of the war such a sweep, if not actually enormously beyond the strength available for it, would certainly have involved many a fatal delay in the progress of the troops.

[Sidenote: Two notable Advocates of Clemency.]

This championship of clemency is no new thing in the war annals of our island home, and Lord Roberts, in his insistence on it, did but tread in the steps of the very mightiest of his predecessors. Wellington during the Peninsular wars actually dismissed from his service and sent back in disgrace to Spain 25,000 sorely-needed Spanish soldiers, simply because he could not restrain their wayside barbarities. He recognised that a policy which outrages humanity, in the long run means disaster; and frankly confessed concerning his troops, that if they plundered they would ruin all. In a precisely similar vein is Nelson's last prayer, which constitutes the last entry but one in his diary:--"May the great God, whom I worship, grant to my country ... a glorious victory. May no misconduct in anyone tarnish it, and may humanity after victory be the predominant feature in the British fleet."

It was in the spirit of Nelson's prayer and Wellington's precept that Lord Roberts strove to conduct his South African operations. With what success let all the world bear witness!

[Sidenote: Mines without Men, and Men without Meat.]

From "The three Sisters," which we reached on our Sabbathless Sunday, we tramped all day on Monday till we reached a tributary of the Crocodile River close to the Noordkaap railway station, about seven miles out from Barberton, which we were not then privileged to visit. Near this place we found the famous Sheba gold mine, its costly machinery for the present lying idle, and its cottages deserted at the stern bidding of intruding war--that most potent disturber of the industries of peace. Here from the loftiest mountain peaks were cables, with cages attached, sloping down to the gold-crushing house; and across the river, in which, crocodiles or no crocodiles, we enjoyed a delicious bathe, there was a similar steel rope suspended as the only possible though perilous way of getting across when the river is in flood. In this as in all other respects, however, a gracious Providence seemed to watch over us for good, seeing that not once during all the eleven months we had been in the country had we found a single river so full as to be unfordable. Moreover, though now tramping through a notorious fever country, the long overdue rain and fever alike lingered in their pursuit of us and overtook us not, so that up to that time not a solitary case of enteric occurred in all our camp. The incessant use of one's heels seems to be the best preservative of health, for it is only among sedentary troops that sickness of any sort really runs riot.

The rations, however, have often been of the short measure type in consequence of the prodigious difficulty of transport over roads that are merely unfrequented tracks, and the utter wearisomeness of such day after day tramps on almost empty stomachs has been so pronounced that the men often laughingly avowed they would prefer fourth class by train to even first class on foot. When they occasionally marched and climbed in almost gloomy silence I sometimes advised them to try the effect on their pedestrian powers of a lively song, and playfully suggested this new version of an old-time melody--


Cheer, boys, cheer,
No more of idle sorrow;
Cheer, boys, cheer,
There'll be another march to-morrow.

But though they readily recognised the appropriateness of the sentiment, they frankly confessed it was impossible to sing on three-quarters of a pound of uncooked flour in place of a full day's rations, which indeed it was. Next day these much-tried men had to wade three times through the river, mostly with their boots and putties on, so that though short of bread and biscuit they were well supplied with "dampers," unfortunately of a sort that soaked but never satisfied.

[Sidenote: Much fat in the fire.]

After passing "Joe's Luck," where for us "there was no luck about the house, there was no luck at all," the Guards reached Avoca, another station on the Barberton branch; and here we found not only a fine railway bridge destroyed with dynamite, but also the railway sheds, recently crammed full with government stores, mostly provisions, now ruthlessly given to the flames and absolutely destroyed. Thousands of tins of condensed milk had flown like bombs in all directions, and like bombs had burst, when the intense heat had turned the confined milk to steam. Butter by the ton had ignominiously ended its days by merely adding so much more fat to the fire. All good things here, laboriously treasured for the benefit of the Transvaal troops, were consumed in quite another fashion from that intended. Even accumulated locomotives to the number of about fifty had been in some cases elaborately mutilated, or caught, and twisted out of all utility, by the devouring flames. So wanton is the waste war begets. The torch has played a comparatively small part in this contest; but it is food supplies that have suffered most from its ravages, and the Boers, with a slimness that baffled us, having thus burned their food, bequeathed to us their famished wives and children. Thousands of these innocents drew full British rations, when thousands of British soldiers were drawing half rations. That is not the Old Testament and Boer-beloved way of waging war, but it foreshadows the slow dawning of an era when, constrained by an overmastering sense of brotherhood,


Men will hang the trumpet in the hall,
And study war no more!

[Sidenote: More fat and mightier flames.]

Beyond Avoca we rested for the night at Fever Creek, and were alarmed by the approach of a heavy thunderstorm just as we were commencing our dinner in the dense darkness. So I crept for refuge between the courses of our homely meal under a friendly waggon, and thence came forth from time to time as wind and weather permitted, to renew acquaintance with my deserted platter. Finally, when the storm had somewhat abated, we sought the scanty protection and repose to be found under our damp blankets. That for us with such favouring conditions Fever Creek did not justify its name seems wonderful.

On the Wednesday of that week the Guards' Brigade made a desperate push to reach Kaap Muiden, where the Barberton branch joins the main line to Delagoa Bay, though the ever-haunting transport difficulty made the effort only imperfectly successful. Three out of the four battalions were compelled to bivouac seven miles behind, while the one battalion that did that night reach the junction had at the finish a sort of racing march to get there. While resting for a few minutes outside "The Lion's Creek" station the colonel told his men that they were to travel the rest of the way by rail; whereupon they gave a ringing cheer and started at a prodigious pace to walk down the line in momentary expectation of meeting the presumably approaching train. Each man seemed to go like a locomotive with full head of steam on, and it took me all my time and strength to keep up with them. Nevertheless that train never met us. It never even started, and at that puffing perspiring pace the battalion proceeded all the way on foot. We had indeed come by rail, but that we found was quite another thing from travelling by train; and the sequel forcefully reminded one of the simpleton who was beguiled into riding in a sedan-chair from which both seat and bottom had been carefully removed. When the ride was over he is reported to have summed up the situation by saying he might as well have walked but for "the say so" of the thing. And but for the say so of the thing that merrily beguiled battalion might as well have gone by road as by rail.

It was, however, a most wonderful sight that greeted them as they stumbled through the darkness into the junction. At one end of the station there was a huge engine-house, surrounded as well as filled, not only with locomotives but also with gigantic stacks of food stuffs, now all involved in one vast blaze that had not burned itself out when the Brigade returned ten days later. There were long trains of trucks filled with flour, sugar and coffee, over some of which paraffin had been freely poured and set alight. So here a truck and there a truck, with one or two untouched trucks between, was burning furiously. In some cases the mischief had been stopped in mid-career by friendly Kaffir hands, which had pulled off from this truck and that a newly-kindled sack, and flung it down between the rails where it lay making a little bonfire that was all its own. Then too broken sacks of unburnt flour lay all about the place looking in the semi-darkness like the Psalmist's "snow in Salmon"; but flour so flavoured and soaked with paraffin that when that night it was served out to be cooked as best it could be by the famished men some of them laughingly asserted it exploded in the process. Oh, was not that a dainty dish to set before such kings! At the far end of the station were ten trucks of coal blazing more vigorously than in any grate, besides yet other trucks filled with government stationery and no one knows what beside. It was an awe-inspiring sight and pitiful in the extreme.

[Sidenote: A welcome lift by the way.]

Though too late to save all the treasure stored at this junction, we nevertheless secured an invaluable supply of rolling stock and of certain kinds of provender, so that for a few days we lacked little that was essential except biscuits for the men and forage for the mules. But to prevent if possible further down the line another such holocaust as took place here, our men started at break of day on a forced march towards Koomati Poort.

The line we learned was in fair working order for the next fifteen miles, and for that distance the heavy baggage with men in charge of the same was sent by train. I did not confess to being baggage nor was I in charge thereof, but none the less when my ever courteous and thoughtful colonel urged me to accompany the baggage for those few miles I looked upon his advice in the light of a command, and so accepted my almost only lift of any sort in the long march from the Orange River to Koomati Poort. The full day's march for the men was twenty-five miles through a region that at that season of the year had already become a kind of burning fiery furnace; and the abridging of it for me by at least a half was all the more readily agreed to because my solitary pair of boots was unfortunately in a double sense on its last legs. A merciful man is merciful to his boots, especially when they happen to be his only pair.

[Sidenote: "Rags and tatters get ye gone."]

Nor in the matter of leather alone were these Guardsmen lamentably lacking. One of the three famous Napier brothers when fighting at close quarters in the battle of Busaco fiercely refused to dismount that he might become a less conspicuous mark for bullets, or even to cover his red uniform with a cloak. "This," said he, "is the uniform of my regiment, and in it I will show, or fall this day." Barely a moment after a bullet smashed his jaw. At the very outset of the Boer war, to the sore annoyance of Boer sharpshooters, the British War Office in this one respect showed great wisdom. All the pomp and pride and circumstance of war were from the outset laid aside, especially in the matter of clothing; but though in that direction almost all regimental distinctions, and distinctions of rank, were deliberately discarded, so that scarcely a speck of martial red was anywhere to be seen, the clothing actually supplied proved astonishingly short-lived. The roughness of the way soon turned it into rags and tatters, and disreputable holes appeared precisely where holes ought not to be. On this very march I was much amused by seeing a smart young Guardsman wearing a sack where his trousers should have been. On each face of the sack was a huge O. Above the O, in bold lettering, appeared the word OATS, and underneath the O was printed 80 lbs. The proudest man in all the brigade that day seemed he! Well-nigh as travel-stained were we, and torn, as Hereward the Wake when he returned to Bruges.

[Sidenote: Destruction and still more destruction.]

On Sunday, September 23rd, at Hector Spruit we most unexpectedly lingered till after noonday, partly to avoid the intense heat on our next march of nineteen miles through an absolutely waterless wilderness, and partly because of the enormous difficulties involved in finding tracks or making them through patches of thorny jungle. We were thus able to arrange for a surprise parade service, and when that was over some of our men who had gone for a bathe found awaiting them a still more pleasant surprise. In the broad waters of the Crocodile they alighted on a large quantity of abandoned and broken Boer guns and rifles. Such abandonment now became an almost daily occurrence, and continued to be for more than another six months, till all men marvelled whence came the seemingly inexhaustible supply. At Lydenberg, which Buller captured on September 6th, and again at Spitzkop which he entered on September 15th, stores of almost every kind were found well-nigh enough to feed and furnish a little army; though in their retreat to the latter stronghold the burghers had flung some of their big guns and no less than thirteen ammunition waggons over the cliffs to prevent them falling into the hands of the British. Never was a nation so armed to the teeth. As nature had made every hill a fortress, so the Transvaal Government had made pretty nearly every hamlet an arsenal; and about this same time French on the 14th, at Barberton, had found in addition to more warlike stores forty locomotives which our foes were fortunately too frightened to linger long enough to destroy. Those locos were worth to us more than a king's ransom!

That afternoon we marched till dark, then lighted our fires, and bemoaned the emptiness of our water bottles, while awaiting the arrival of our blanket waggons. But in half an hour came another sharp surprise, for without a moment's warning we were ordered to resume our march for five miles more. So through the darkness we stumbled as best we could along the damaged railway line. About midnight in the midst of a prickly jungle, a bit of bread and cheese, a drink of water if we had any left, and a blanket, paved the way for brief repose; but at four o'clock next morning we were all astir once more, to find ourselves within sight of a tiny railway station called Tin Vosch, where two more locomotives and a long line of trucks awaited capture.

[Sidenote: At Koomati Poort.]

On Monday, September 24th, at about eight o'clock in the morning, to General Pole Carew and Brigadier-General Jones fell the honour of leading their Guardsmen into Koomati Poort, the extreme eastern limit of the Transvaal--and that without seeing a solitary Boer or having to fire a single bullet. The French historian of the Peninsular War declares that "the English were the best marksmen in Europe--indeed the only troops who were perfectly practised in the use of small arms." But then their withering volleys were sometimes fired at a distance of only a few yards from the wavering masses of their foes, and under such conditions good marksmanship is easy to attain. A blind man might bet he would not miss. On the other hand, he must be a good shot indeed who can hit a foe he never sees. In these last weeks there were few casualties among the Boers, because they kept well out of casualty range. They were so frightened they even forgot to snipe. The valiant old President so long ago as September 11th had fled with his splendidly well-filled money bags across the Portuguese frontier; abandoning his burghers who were still in the field to whatever might chance to be their fate. That fate he watched, and waited for, from the secure retreat of the Portuguese Governor's veranda close by the Eastern Sea, where he sat and mused as aforetime on his stoep at Pretoria; his well-thumbed Bible still by his side, his well-used pipe still between his lips. Surely Napoleon the Third at Chislehurst, broken in health, broken in heart, was a scarcely more pathetic spectacle! Six or seven days later the old man saw special trains beginning to arrive, all crowded with mercenary fighting men from many lands, all bent only on following his own uncourageous example, seeking personal safety by the sea. First came 700; then on the 24th, the very day the Guards entered Koomati Poort, 2000 more, who were mostly ruined burghers, and who thus arrived at Delagoa Bay to become like Kruger himself the guests or prisoners of the Portuguese.

To the Portuguese we ourselves owe no small debt of gratitude, for they had sternly forbidden the destruction of the magnificent railway bridge across the Koomati, in which their government held large financial interests. But other destruction they could not hinder.

Just in front of us lay the superbly lovely junction of the Crocodile with the Koomati River, and appropriately enough I then saw in midstream, clinging to a rock, a real crocodile, though, like the two Boer Republics, as dead as a door nail. Immediately beyond ran a ridge of hills which served as the boundary between the Transvaal and the Portuguese territory. Along that ridge floated a line of Portuguese flags, and within just a few yards of them the ever-slim Boer had planted some of his long-range guns, not that there he might make his last valiant stand, but that from thence he might present our approaching troops with a few parting shots. This final outrage on their own flag our friendly neighbours forbade. So we discovered the guns still in position but destroyed with dynamite. Thus finding not a solitary soul left to dispute possession with us we somewhat prematurely concluded that at last, through God's mercy, our toils were ended, our warfare accomplished. What wonder therefore if in that hour of bloodless triumph there were some whose hearts exclaimed, "We praise Thee O God, we acknowledge Thee to be the Lord!" To the God of Battles the Boer had made his mutely stern appeal and with this result.

[Sidenote: Two notable Fugitives.]

The Household Brigade Magazine tells an amusing story of a Guardsman hailing from Ireland who at one of our base hospitals was supplied with some wine as a most welcome "medical comfort." Therein right loyally he drank the Queen's health, and then after a pause startled his comrades by adding, "Here's to old Kruger! God bless him!" Such a disloyal sentiment, so soon tripping up the heels of his own loyalty, called forth loud and angry protests, whereupon he exclaimed, "Why not? Only for him where would the war be? And only for him I would never have sent my old mother the Queen's chocolate!"

The Queen's chocolate is not the only bit of compensating sweetness begotten out of the bitterness of this war. The fiery hostility of Kruger, like the quenchless hate of Napoleon a hundred years ago, has not been without beneficent influence on our national character and destiny, and these two years of war have seemingly done more for the consolidation of the empire than twenty years of peace. Whether he and Steyn used the Africander Bond as their tool or were themselves its tools the outcome of the war is the same. To Great Britain it has so bound Greater Britain in love-bonds and mutual loyalty as to make all the world wonder. The President of the Transvaal months after the war began is reported to have said: "If the moon is inhabited I cannot understand why John Bull has not yet annexed it"; but with respect to his own beloved Republic he reckoned it was far safer than the moon, for he added: "So surely as there is a God of righteousness, so surely will the Vierkleur be victorious."

[Sidenote: The propaganda of the Africander Bond.]

What that victory, however, would inevitably have involved was made abundantly plain in the pages of De Patriot, the once official organ of the Africander Bond. There, as long ago as 1882, it was written: "The English Government keep talking of a Confederation under the British flag. That will never happen. There is just one hindrance to Confederation, and that is the British flag. Let them take that away, and within a year the Confederation under the Free Africander flag would be established; but so long as the English flag remains here the Africander Bond must be our Confederation. The British must just have Simon's Bay as a naval and military station on the road to India, and give over all Africa to the Africanders."

It then adds: "Let every Africander in this Colony (that is, the Cape) for the sake of security take care that he has a good rifle and a box of cartridges, and that he knows how to use them." English trade is to be boycotted, nor is this veiled hostility to end even there. "Sell no land to Englishmen! We especially say this to our Transvaal brethren. The Boers are the landowners, and the proud little Englishmen are dependent on the Boers. Now that the war against the English Government is over, the war against the English language must begin. It must be considered a disgrace to speak English. The English governess is a pest. Africander parents, banish this pest from your houses!"

Now, however, that Kruger is gone, and the Africander Bond has well nigh given up the ghost, English governesses in South Africa will be given another chance, which is at least some small compensation for all the cost and complicated consequences of this wanton war.

[Sidenote: Ex-President Steyn.]

Martinus Theunis Steyn, late President of what was once the Orange Free State, is in almost all respects a marked contrast to the Transvaal President, whose folly he abetted and whose flight for a while he shared. Steyn, speaking broadly, is almost young enough to be Kruger's grandson, and was never, as Kruger was from his birth, a British subject, for he was born at Wynburg some few years after the Orange Free State received its independence. Whilst Kruger was never for a single hour under the schoolmaster's rod, and is laughingly said even now to be unable to read anything which he has not first committed to memory, Steyn is a man of considerable culture, having been trained in England as a barrister, and having practised at the bar in Bloemfontein for six years before he became President. He therefore could not plead ignorance as his excuse when he flung his ultimatum in the face of Great Britain and Ireland. Whilst Kruger was a man of war from his youth, a "strong, unscrupulous, grim, determined man," Steyn never saw a shot fired in his life except in sport till this war began, yet all strangely it was the fighting President who fled from the face of the Guards, with all their multitudinous comrades in arms, and never rested till the sea removed him beyond their reach, while the lawyerly President, the man of peace, doubled back on his pursuers, returned by rugged by-paths to the land he had ruined, and there in association with De Wet became even more a fugitive than ancient Cain or the men of Adullam's cave.

That many of his own people hotly disapproved of the course their infatuated ruler took is common knowledge; but by no one has that fact been more powerfully emphasised than by Paul Botha in his famous book "From Boer to Boer." Rightly or wrongly, this is what, briefly put, Botha says:--

[Sidenote: Paul Botha's opinion of this Ex-President.]

When as a Free Stater I think of the war and realise that we have lost the independence of our little state, I feel that I could curse Martinus Theunis Steyn who used his country as a stepping stone for the furtherance of his own private ends. He sold his country to the Transvaal in the hope that Paul Kruger's mantle would fall on him. The first time Kruger visited the Orange Free State after Steyn's election the latter introduced him at a public banquet with these words, "This is my Father!" The thought occurred to me at the time, "Yes, and you are waiting for your father's shoes." He hoped to succeed "his father" as President of the combined republics of united South Africa. For this giddy vision he ignored the real interests of our little state, and dragged the country into an absolutely unnecessary and insane war. I maintain there were only two courses open to England in answer to Kruger's challenging policy--to fight, or to retire from South Africa--and it was only possible for men suffering from tremendously swollen heads, such as our leaders were suffering from, to doubt the issue.

I ask any man to tell me what quarrel we had with England? Was any injury done to us? Such questions make one's hair stand on end. Whether knave or fool, Steyn did not prepare himself adequately for his gigantic undertaking. He commenced this war with a firm trust in God and the most gross negligence. But it is impossible to reason with the men now at the front. With the exception of a few officials these men consist of ignorant "bywoners," augmented by desperate men from the Cape who have nothing to lose, and who lead a jolly rollicking life on commando, stealing and looting from the farmers who have surrendered, and whom they opprobriously call "handsuppers!"

These bywoners believe any preposterous story their leaders tell them in order to keep them together. One of my sons who was taken prisoner by Theron because he had laid down his arms, told me, after his escape, it was common laager talk that 60,000 Russians, Americans and Frenchmen were on the water, and expected daily; that China had invaded and occupied England, and that only a small corner of that country still resisted. These are the men who are terrifying their own people. I could instance hundreds of cases to show their atrocious conduct. Notorious thieves and cowards are allowed to clear isolated farmhouses of every valuable. Widows whose husbands have been killed on commando are not safe from their depredations. They have even set fire to dwelling-houses while the inmates were asleep inside.

As to the perfect accuracy of these accusations I can scarcely claim to be a judge, though apparently reliable confirmation of the same reached me from many sources; but I do confidently assert that no kindred accusations can be justly hurled at the men by whose side I tramped from Orange River to Koomati Poort. Their good conduct was only surpassed by their courage, and of them may be generally asserted what Maitland said to the heroic defenders of Hougoumont--"Every man of you deserves promotion."