with Headquarter Staff Office by electric wires.  In addition there was barbed-wire fencing round the larger earthworks, and massive barricades of waggons and sandbags across the principal streets.  All this looked very simple once erected and in working order, but it was the outcome of infinite thought and ever-working vigilance.  Then there was a complete system of telephones, connecting all the redoubts and the hospital with the Staff Office, thereby saving the lives of galloping orderlies, besides gaining their services as defenders in a garrison so small that each unit was an important factor.  Last, but certainly not least, were the bomb-proof shelters, which black labour had constructed under clever supervision all over the town, till at that time, in case of heavy shelling, nearly every inhabitant could be out of harm’s way.  What struck me most forcibly was that, in carrying out these achievements, Colonel Baden-Powell had been lucky enough to find instruments, in the way of experienced men, ready to his hand.  One officer was proficient in bomb-proofs, the postmaster thoroughly understood telephones, while another official had proved himself an expert in laying mines.  The area to be defended had a perimeter of six miles; but, in view of the smallness of the garrison and the overwhelming number of the Boers, it was fortunate the authorities had been bold and adventurous enough to extend the trenches over this wide space, instead of following the old South African idea of going into laager in the market-square, which had been the first suggestion.  The town was probably saved by being able to present so wide a target for the Boer artillery, and although we were then, and for the next few weeks, cut off from all communication with the outer world, even by nigger letter-carriers, and in spite of bullets rattling and whizzing through the market-square and down the side-streets, the Boer outposts were gradually being pushed away by our riflemen in their invisible pits.  While on this subject, I must mention that a day spent in those trenches was anything but an agreeable one.  Parties of six men and an officer occupied them daily before dawn, and remained there eighteen hours, as any attempt to leave would have meant a hail of bullets from the enemy, distant only about 600 yards.  They were dug deep enough to require very little earthwork for protection; hence they were more or less invisible by the enemy in their larger trenches.  These latter were constantly subjected to the annoyance of bullets coming, apparently, from the ground, and, though other foes might have acted differently in like circumstances, the Boers did not care for the job of advancing across the open to dislodge the hidden enemy.