It was literally a town on the veldt.  The veldt was around it everywhere.  It showed up now and then in the town where it was least expected, as though to assert its independence and remind the dwellers in the city that their fathers were its children.

Wonderfully healthy is this little city.  Situated high above sea level, with a climate so bracing and life-giving that the phthisis bacillus can hardly live in it, it seemed to our soldiers, after their long march across the veldt, a veritable City of Refuge.  Alas! how soon it was to be turned into a charnel house!

=The March to Bloemfontein.=

It was to this oasis in the South African desert that Lord Roberts marched his troops after the surrender of Cronje.  It had been a terrible march from the Modder River, and its severity was maintained to the end.  The difficulty of transport was great, and sickness was beginning to tell upon the troops.  The river water, rendered poisonous by the bodies of men and cattle from Cronje’s camp, and the horrible filth of his laager, were responsible for what followed.  The men for the most part kept up until the march was over.  They had determined to reach Bloemfontein at all costs, and many of them in all probability lost their lives through that determination.  They ought to have given up long before they did, but struggled on until, rendered weak by their prolonged exertions, they had no strength to fight the disease which had fastened upon them.

The last march of the Guards was one which the Brigade may well remember with pride, as one of the most famous in its annals.  They actually marched over forty miles in twenty-two consecutive hours, over ground full of holes of all sorts and sizes, and with barbed wire cut and lying on the ground in all directions.  They marched hour after hour in steady silence, broken only by the ‘Glory!  Hallelujah!’ chorus of the Canadians, marched with soleless boots, or with no boots at all, but with putties wrapped round the bare feet.  An hour and a half’s rest, and then on again!  On, ever on!  They are so tired, they feel they can march no further, and yet on they go, steadily marching straight forward, a silent, dogged, determined army out there upon the veldt.  Lord Roberts had promised the Guards that they should follow him into Bloemfontein, and they intended to be there to do it.

=The Work at Bloemfontein.=

Bloemfontein reached, Christian work began in real earnest.  Every one became ‘hard at it’ at once.  The Rev. E.P.  Lowry opened a Soldiers’ Home in the schoolroom of the Wesleyan Church, and day by day provided the cheapest tea in the town at three-pence per head, of which many hundreds of the men availed themselves.  Here, too, he had meetings night by night.  The Rev. James Robertson was also incessantly at work.  The large tent of the Soldiers’ Christian Association was erected in the camp of the Highland Brigade, and became as usual a centre of splendid Christian effort.  Mr. Black tells us that Lord Roberts gave permission for him to accompany him to Bloemfontein, and gave every possible encouragement to the work.