of “rusks,” a kind of bread baked until it becomes crisp and hard, and plenty of steaming hot coffee.  I never saw any people so fond of this beverage as the Boers are.  The Australian bushman and digger loves tea, and can almost exist upon it; but these Boers cling to coffee.  They live, when out in laager, like Spartans, they dress anyhow, sleep anyhow, and eat just rusks and precious little else.  Talk about “Tommy” and his hard times, why a private soldier at the front sleeps better, dresses better, and eats better than a Boer general; yet never once did I hear a Boer complain of hardships.  After tea the Boers sit about and clean their rifles; the women move from one little group to another, chatting cheerfully, but I saw nothing in their conduct, or in the conduct of any man towards one of them, that would cause the most chaste matron in Great Britain to blush or droop her eyes.  There is in the laager an utter absence of what we term soldierly discipline; men moved about, went and came in a free and easy fashion, just as I have seen them do a thousand times in diggers’ camps.  There was no saluting of officers, no stiffness, no starch anywhere.  The general lounges about with hands in pockets and pipe in mouth; no one pays him any special deference.  He talks to the men, the striplings, and the women, and they talk back to him in a manner which seems strange to a Britisher familiar to the ways of military camps.  After the chatting, the pridikant, or parson, if there is one in the laager, raises his hands, and all listen with reverent faces whilst the man of God utters a few words in a solemn, earnest tone; then all kneel, and a prayer floats up towards the skies, and a few moments later the whole camp is wrapped in sleep, nothing is heard but the neighing of horses, the lowing of cattle, the bleating of sheep, and the occasional barking of a dog.  There is no clatter of arms, no ringing of bugles, no deep-toned challenge of sentries, no footfall of changing pickets.

At regular intervals men rise silently from the ranks of the sleepers, pick up their rifles noiselessly, and silently, like ghosts, slip out into the deep shadows of the kopjes, and other men, equally silent, glide in from posts they have been guarding, and stretch themselves out to snatch slumber whilst they may.  At dawn the men toss their blankets aside, and spring up ready dressed, and move amongst their horses; the Kaffirs attend to the morning meal, the everlasting rusks and coffee are served up, horses are saddled, cattle are yoked to waggons, and in the twinkling of an eye the camp is broken up, and the irregular army is on the march again, with scouts guarding every pass in front, scouts watching (themselves unseen) on every height.  They travel fast, because they travel light; they use very little water, because they find it impossible to move it from place to place.  Many critics charge them with habits of personal uncleanliness.  It is true that in their laagers one does not see