n wounded had never seen one of the enemy. So, having heard that our
Boer prisoners--450 in number--had been landed from Her Majesty's ship
_Penelope_ and encamped at Simonstown, I went there to visit them.

From Cape Town the land stretches an arm southward to the Cape of Good
Hope and Bellows Rock, where it divides the Atlantic from the Indian
Ocean. The mainland runs about as far southward, so that the arm partly
encloses the waters of False Bay; and in the hollow of its elbow nestles
Simonstown. This is a cluster of white houses on the sea-beat foot of a
hill that sweeps upward to the giddy white clouds. All day long at that
season the hill is steeped in sunshine; all day long its lower slopes
reverberate to the assault of the rollers while the summit is folded in
the silence of the upper air. Close in-shore half a dozen cruisers were
lying like rocks among the deep moving waters; the St. George's ensign
floated from the shore flagstaffs, and an air of whiteness and tidiness
proclaimed the naval station.

The railway from Cape Town runs so close to the shore of the bay that
you cannot hear yourself speak for the noise of bursting surf. It
brought me to Simonstown in the full glare and heat of the afternoon.
The prisoners were encamped about a hundred yards out of the town, and
as we walked through the street we spoke with pity of men imprisoned on
such a day. What we expected I do not quite know--dungeons perhaps, or
cells hewn out of the rock--but it was with something like a shock of
disappointment or relief (according to our notions of appropriate
treatment for prisoners) that we caught our first view of the
encampment. Just beyond the town the hillside takes a gentler slope,
dipping a lawn of sea-grass into the water; and it was upon this
charming spot, enclosed with a double fence, that the prisoners were
quartered. We pressed our faces against the wires and stared, much as
one stares in the Zoo at a cageful of newly-arrived animals that have
cost a great deal of money and maybe a life or two. Fine, big men,
stalwart and burned brown by the sun; stern-looking, but with that air
of large contentment they wear who live much alone and out of doors;
massive of jaw and forehead, moulded after a grand pattern. They were
lying on the grass, standing in little groups, sauntering up and down
in the hot sunshine, playing cricket with ponderous energy, bathing and
sporting in the clear apple-green water. It was not their