re best.

[Sidenote: _Friends in need are friends indeed._]

On leaving the neighbourhood of Belfast we soon found ourselves
marching through Helvetia, the Switzerland of South Africa, a region
of insurmountable precipices and deep defiles, where scarcely any
foliage was found, and in that winter season no verdure. There rose in
all directions towering hills, which sometimes bore upon their brow a
touch of real majesty; and when crowned, as we saw them, with fleecy
mist, resembled not remotely the snow-clad Alps. Indeed, during that
whole week the toils and travels of the Guards brought to the mind of
many the familiar story of Hannibal and his vast army crossing the
Alps; only the Carthaginian general had no heavy guns and long lines
of ammunition waggons to add to his already enormous difficulties; his
men had little to carry on their broad backs compared with what a
modern Guardsman has to shoulder; nor did Hannibal take with him a
small army corps of newspaper correspondents to chronicle all the
petty disasters and delays met with by the way. Few commanders-in-chief
are lovers of correspondents, whether of the professional or of the
private type. Tell-tale tongues and pens may perchance do more
mischief than machine guns and mausers!

At the latter end of the week our men had to climb over what seemed to
be the backbone of that terrific region, with results almost
disastrous to our long train of transport waggons. Botha, whose
retreat towards Lydenberg our flanking movement had apparently
prevented, we failed to find; so after fighting a mild rear-guard
action, we scarce knew with whom, we encamped that night for the first
and last time side by side with Buller's column.

The major part, however, of the Grenadier battalion remained till next
morning far away in the rear to guard our huge convoy while climbing
up and climbing down the perilous ridge just referred to, with the
result that some of us forming the advanced party found ourselves
without food or shelter. Yet the soldierly courtesy which has so often
hastened to my help during this campaign did not fail in this new hour
of need. A sergeant-major of the bearer company most graciously lent
me his own overcoat, the night being bitterly cold; the officers of
the Scots Guards not only invited me to dine with them, but one of
them supplied me with a rug, whilst another pressed on me the loan of
his mackintosh "to keep off the dew," and thus enwrapped I lay on