know why the guns didn’t come up, but was told that they didn’t like to push on too far, as the Boers were supposed to be in force here.  It seemed a pity to miss such a good shot, especially as we had an enormous great escort and an open country back to camp.  But that is the way with guns; sometimes they rush up to within 500 yards of the enemy before they shoot, and sometimes they won’t shoot at all.

The afternoon was spent in carrying out our reconnaissance.  A reconnaissance is undertaken with a view to exposing the enemy’s position and strength.  Without intending a real attack, you demonstrate, feign a forward movement, push on in one place or another, or threaten to turn his flanks; so obliging him to move his men here and there, expose his strength and the limits of the position, and, perhaps, the whereabouts and number of his guns, if they should be tempted to open fire at our scouts.  This is the theory of the thing.  In practice it doesn’t quite work, owing to the utter ignorance of the Boers of all military tactics.  On all occasions when we have carried out these manoeuvres, notably round the Magersfontein hills before the battle, they have not only failed to make the proper responses to our moves, but have neglected to take notice of them in any way whatever.  Not a gun speaks, not a man is to be seen.  We demonstrate before empty hills.  Creepily, you may conjecture the fierce eyes along the rock edge, but nothing shows.  In vain we circle about the plain, advance, retire, curtsey, and set to him; our enemy, like the tortoise, “will not join the dance.”  Nothing is more discouraging.  It is like playing to an empty house.  However, as young B——­ said to me, we did our part anyway, and if they are so ignorant as not to know the counter-moves, well, they must take the consequences.  Manoeuvres of this kind, I must tell you, are a high test of military skill, and are often not fully intelligible to the lay mind.  As an instance of this, I heard a man of ours, a shrewd fellow but no soldier, say, in his coarse Colonial way, as we were riding home, that he “was glad we had finished making a b——­y exhibition of ourselves.”  It is to be hoped that after a little we shall get to appreciate these manoeuvres better.  Just at first there is a slight suggestion of Gilbert and Sullivan about them.

LETTER VIII

SCOUTING ON THE MODDER

THORNHILL FARM, January 30, 1900.

On the eastern or Jacobsdal side the country is all a plain, dull and monotonous like a huge prairie, with no shade from the heat or shelter from the thunderstorms.  On the western side it is very different.  Great hills run roughly parallel to the river course, but leave a wide plain between themselves and it.  They are clothed with a few scant bushes, out of which their tops rise bare and rocky; but in the shady hollows and gorges the low thorn-trees (mimosas) grow thickly,