low any
but my own lawful servants to approach the encampment. We did eighteen
miles to-day, and encamped at Greefdal in the evening. We are now well
north of Fourteen Streams, where all day long we have heard the guns
booming. In the afternoon the native scouts (who work far outside the
ground patrolled by our scouts and flankers) reported a party of 500
Boers approaching from the south and east, but they must have turned
northward, for we have heard nothing more of them. This morning we could
see a long line of dust moving about twenty miles to the north-east; but
it has subsided, and the Boers are probably in laager. It is fortunate
that Colonel Mahon is an absolutely careful man, since any little
neglect in the matter of patrolling and choosing bivouac positions might
mean complete disaster to the column, and the frustration of its end.
These little things have often been neglected in this campaign; and
whenever there has been a convoy captured, it has been because someone
has taken for granted that someone else was holding a drift or pass. So
we move warily through a placid country that may become at any moment
full of menace; travelling may at any moment be exchanged for fighting,
and the roadway for the battlefield; even the green slopes that front us
may hide the gravest danger, and the river-bed with its grasses and
lapsing waters become a pit of death. But one knows little of the
future; it is on the knees of the gods.

XX

FROM TAUNGS TO VRYBURG

DRY HARTZ, _Tuesday, May 8th_.

The march of yesterday afternoon was not without its incidents. We came
in sight of the village of Taungs at about four o'clock, our road
passing ten miles to the west of it at the opposite side of the Hartz
valley. I was riding with the advance guard when a man rode up from the
direction of the village.

"I've just come to have a look at the troops," said he; "I'm a British
subject."

"Oh, are you?" said the colonel in command of the guard, and ordered him
to be detained and examined. He told us a great many lies, and is now a
prisoner. We have collected about nine prisoners so far, chiefly
insurgents against whom there is grave evidence; and they ride along in
an ox-waggon quite contentedly, while the dozen men of the Scots
Fusiliers who act as their escort regale them with specimens of northern
wit. To judge by the sounds of hilarity which float from the waggon,
even towards the end of a long march, their efforts are