had
fondly hoped to be shortly on their way to Hyde Park Corner, suffered
just then from a severe attack of heart-sickness, which was none other
than a passing spasm of home-sickness! "Home, sweet home" sighed they,
"and we never knew how sweet till now"! Meanwhile, however, we were
wonderfully well supplied with home news, for within a single
fortnight no less than 360 sacks of letters and various postal packets
reached the Guards' Brigade, in spite of whole mails being captured by
the Boers, and hosts of individual letters or parcels having gone
hopelessly astray. Official reports declare that a weekly average of
nearly 750,000 postal items were sent from England to the army in
South Africa throughout the whole period covered by the war, so that
it is quite clear we were not forgotten by loved ones far away, and
the knowledge of that fact afforded solace, if not actual healing,
even for those whose heart-sickness was most acute.

[Sidenote: _Further fighting._]

Early in July, the commander-in-chief had accumulated sufficient
supplies, and secured sufficient remounts, to make a further advance
possible. On the 7th, the Boers were pushed back by Hutton to Bronkers
Spruit, where as the sequel of the Diamond Hill fight on June 12th,
the Australians had surprised and riddled a Boer laager. While however
Botha was thus sullenly retreating eastward, he secretly despatched a
strong detachment round our left wing to the north-west of Pretoria
under the leadership of Delarey, who on the 11th flung himself like a
thunderbolt out of a clear sky on a weak post at Nitral's Nek, and
there captured two guns with 200 prisoners. On July 16th, Botha
himself once more attacked our forces, but was again driven off by
Generals Pole Carew and Hutton; and the surrender on the 29th of
General Prinsloo, with over 4000 Boers and three guns in the Orange
River Colony, secured our remoter lines of communication from a very
formidable menace, so clearing the course for another onward move.

[Sidenote: _Touch not, taste not, handle not._]

On Tuesday, July 24th, the Guards' Brigade said good-bye to
Donkerhook, where their camp had become a fixture since the fight on
Diamond Hill, and where their conduct once more won my warmest
admiration. In the very midst of that camp, in which so many thousands
of men tarried so long, were sundry farmhouses, and Kaffir homes, the
occupants of which were never molested from first to last, nor any of
their