rrival
moved to Naauwpoort, and a battery and a half of artillery swelled the
little garrison. The development of the place now went on more rapidly.

Mr. E. F. Knight, the brilliant correspondent of the _Morning Post_,
wrote an interesting description of this now important locality only a
few days before he had the misfortune to lose his arm through the
treachery of the Boers. He said:--

"The township, which surrounds the railway station, is merely a
congregation of a few houses belonging to people connected with
the railway. It stands in the midst of a desert--a dusty,
treeless plain covered with sparse low sage brush and enclosed
by rocky ridges. The camp is ever increasing in size, but, as I
write, it consists of two encampments, one to the north and one
to the south of the township, all the troops being under
canvas. In the North Camp are the 2nd Battalion of the King's
Own Yorkshire Light Infantry, eight hundred strong, and a
field-battery and a half-battery (15-pounders), and in the
South Camp, in which I have pitched my tent, is the remount
camp, with a company of the Army Service Corps, a supply
detachment of the same corps, with a field-bakery, two
half-sections of the Royal Engineers, a company of the Army
Ordnance Corps, and a detachment of the Volunteer Medical Staff
Corps. A wing of the Berkshire Regiment has also just come in
from Naauwpoort, which we have abandoned as being untenable by
the small force which could at present be spared to defend it.
There are at De Aar now about two thousand men all told,
including Major Rimington's two hundred scouts. More artillery
is expected from Cape Town, and by the time this letter reaches
England we shall probably be largely reinforced. Several
redoubts, lines of intrenchments, and sangars on the heights
protect the camps, and a few small guns have been posted on the
neighbouring kopjes. The surrounding country is being well
patrolled, and we cannot well be taken by surprise.... In
short, one sees here all that skilled, laborious, indispensable
preparation for the campaign of which the British public knows
so little, and which never receives its due credit at home.

"It is wonderful, indeed, that the Boers did not attempt to
seize this valuable prize a week or so ago, when the camp was
practically unde