there a troop of cavalry to protect them or to prevent straggling.  And here let me make an unpleasant digression.  The vast amount of baggage this army takes with it on the march hampers its movements and utterly precludes all possibility of surprising the enemy.  I have never before seen even officers accommodated with tents on service, though both the Indian frontier and the Soudan lie under a hotter sun than South Africa.  But here to day, within striking distance of a mobile enemy whom we wish to circumvent, every private soldier has canvas shelter, and the other arrangements are on an equally elaborate scale.  The consequence is that roads are crowded, drifts are blocked, marching troops are delayed, and all rapidity of movement is out of the question.  Meanwhile, the enemy completes the fortification of his positions, and the cost of capturing them rises.  It is a poor economy to let a soldier live well for three days at the price of killing him on the fourth.[1]

We marched off with the rearguard at last, and the column twisted away among the hills towards the west.  After marching about three miles we reached the point where the track from Frere joined the track from Chieveley, and here two streams of waggons flowed into one another like the confluence of rivers.  Shortly after this all the mounted forces with the baggage were directed to concentrate at the head of the column, and, leaving the tardy waggons to toil along at their own pace, we trotted swiftly forward.  Pretorius’s Farm was reached at noon—­a tin-roofed house, a few sheds, a dozen trees, and an artificial pond filled to the brim by the recent rains.  Here drawn up in the spacious plain were the Royal Dragoons—­distinguished from the Colonial Corps by the bristle of lances bare of pennons above their ranks and by their great horses—­one squadron of the already famous Imperial Light Horse, and Bethune’s Mounted Infantry.  The Dragoons remained at the farm, which was that night to be the camping place of Clery’s division.  But all the rest of the mounted forces, about a thousand men, and a battery of artillery were hurried forward to seize the bridge across the Little Tugela at Springfield.

So on we ride, ‘trot and walk,’ lightly and easily over the good turf, and winding in scattered practical formations among the beautiful verdant hills of Natal.  Presently we topped a ridge and entered a very extensive basin of country—­a huge circular valley of green grass with sloping hills apparently on all sides and towards the west, bluffs, rising range above range, to the bright purple wall of the Drakensberg.  Other valleys opened out from this, some half veiled in thin mist, others into which the sun was shining, filled with a curious blue light, so that one seemed to be looking down into depths of clear water, and everyone rejoiced in the splendours of the delightful landscape.