vague
moral views. That cart had to be brought into camp by night, and there
was only one way in which it could be done. I rode about for ten
minutes, and found an old framework so thin and so dejected that I
blushed when I put the halter on it; it had been abandoned on account
of lameness, from which it had recovered, and had since been starving.
They harnessed it up and it brought in the cart; and that night, being
given a good feed of oats, it died from shock. Another skeleton was
found in the morning to take its place; but this skeleton grew fat. We
used to laugh at these misfortunes, but the poor horses had a cruel
time, especially the English ones; no one would have recognised the
Horse Artillery, although the tragic skeletons that drew the guns still
affected some imitation of their old dash. All the way from Modder to
Bloemfontein was strewn with the bodies of horses; if all other marks
had been gone, these melancholy quarter-mile posts would have guided you
unerringly.

It was night as a rule before the column reached its camp, and there
were some gorgeous pictures in the great outspanning commotion seen
through dust clouds and the red sunset, and by light of many camp fires.
But on this bit of the march we found our quarters sooner than we
expected; and it was early in the afternoon when, climbing the ridge of
undulating plain, I saw the smoke of a shell bursting on the hillside
five miles away, and knew that our day's march, though not our day's
work, was at an end.

XI

THE BATTLE OF DREIFONTEIN AND THE MARCH ON BLOEMFONTEIN

A great chain of kopjes barred the horizon ahead of us, and we came to
the usual conclusion that the Boers were opposing our advance. It is
well to remember that Lord Roberts's army was not marching in a single
column, but in three separate columns, of which the Cavalry Division was
marching on a road about six miles to the north, and the Seventh
Division by a road about four miles to the south of the main body.
General French was a day's march ahead of the main army, and on this
morning he reached Abraham's Kraal (the most northerly hill of the chain
held by the Boers) at ten o'clock, while the Ninth Division did not
arrive until four o'clock. It will thus be seen that one end of the
position was a couple of hours' ride distant from the other and far out
of sight of it.

No one saw the whole of the battle of Dreifontein. General French, when
he arrived at ten in the mor