t Geysdorp. After having been long with only mounted troops we
thought the infantry brigade a slow and primitive thing; but we envied
it the drums and fifes, to the music of which the Irishmen were stepping
along bravely when we passed. Although their destination, like ours, was
Lichtenburg, we marched at different times of the day, for even in this
large country there was not room on the road for both brigades. While
they were yet asleep in their bivouacs we were at breakfast, and their
reveille generally found us setting out on the march.

The awaking of a column on these dark, cold mornings is ghostly and
mysterious. The first trumpet-call trembling through the chill starlight
brings one back from dreams to the world. The cavalry trumpeter plays a
longer and more ornate flourish than that sounded by the infantry
bugler, but reveille is all too short on a winter morning. From under
one's shelter one sees the camp return to life--first a match glowing
here, then the smoke and crackle of a fire there, until acres of ground
are scattered with flame. Then the sound of voices begins to insinuate
itself--one never knows exactly when it begins--until the air is lively
with the cries of the cheerful Kaffir. Darkness still on the ground and
cold starlight in the upper air; but eastwards a very sharp eye might
notice a kind of lightening of the gloom. And cold, bitterly cold, one
gratefully withdraws beneath blankets the hand that was experimentally
stretched out. In one's own little camp the stir is also beginning;
fires being kindled, shadowy figures moving through the gloom, the sound
of horses munching corn. Presently the air vibrates to another
trumpet-call--"Stables"; and the few horses (chiefly among the
artillery) that know the calls begin to neigh and paw the ground. Now
the sky above the eastward horizon has faded to the palest blue,
revealing the heads of horses and men where one thought there were only
trees, and along the lower edge of the blue comes another line, like a
fine silver wire. It grows broader and fades into the blue, but in its
place comes a sheet of dull crimson. Millions of miles away God sets it
on fire, and it kindles, glows, flushes to scarlet, melts into gold,
until from the gold flows amber, and from amber the pure white wine of
daylight. All the old colours rush westward across the sky; the veldt
glows with tints that have no name nor description in our dull tongue;
yet these are the mere drip a