ing drugs and
surgeons' cutlery. President Steyn gave me a letter to Dr. Rodgers Reid,
who was in charge, and he offered us our choice of the deserted bedrooms.
It was a most welcome shelter, and in comparison to the cold veldt the
hospital was a haven of comfort. Hundreds of cooing doves, stumbling
over the roof of the barn, helped to fill the air with their peaceful
murmur. It was a strange overture to a battle, but in time I learned to
not listen for any more martial prelude. The Boer does not make a
business of war, and when he is not actually fighting he pretends that he
is camping out for pleasure. In his laager there are no warlike sounds,
no sentries challenge, no bugles call. He has no duties to perform, for
his Kaffir boys care for his pony, gather his wood, and build his fire.
He has nothing to do but to wait for the next fight, and to make the time
pass as best he can. In camp the burghers are like a party of children.
They play games with each other, and play tricks upon each other, and
engage in numerous wrestling bouts, a form of contest of which they seem
particularly fond. They are like children also in that they are direct
and simple, and as courteous as the ideal child should be. Indeed, if I
were asked what struck me as the chief characteristics of the Boer I
should say they were the two qualities which the English have always
disallowed him, his simplicity rather than his "cuteness," and his
courtesy rather than his boorishness.

The force that waited at the drift by Cronje's farm as it lay spread out
on both sides of the river looked like a gathering of Wisconsin
lumbermen, of Adirondack guides and hunters halted at Paul Smith's, like
a Methodist camp-meeting limited entirely to men.

The eye sought in vain for rows of tents, for the horses at the picket
line, for the flags that marked the head-quarters, the commissariat, the
field telegraph, the field post-office, the A. S. C., the R. M. A. C.,
the C. O., and all the other combinations of letters of the military
alphabet.

I remembered that great army of General Buller's as I saw it stretching
out over the basin of the Tugela, like the children of Israel in number,
like Tammany Hall in organization and discipline, with not a tent-pin
missing; with hospitals as complete as those established for a hundred
years in the heart of London; with search-lights, heliographs, war
balloons, Roentgen rays, pontoon bridges, telegraph wagons, and tren