was an awe-inspiring sight and pitiful in the
extreme.

[Sidenote: _A welcome lift by the way._]

Though too late to save all the treasure stored at this junction, we
nevertheless secured an invaluable supply of rolling stock and of
certain kinds of provender, so that for a few days we lacked little
that was essential except biscuits for the men and forage for the
mules. But to prevent if possible further down the line another such
holocaust as took place here, our men started at break of day on a
forced march towards Koomati Poort.

The line we learned was in fair working order for the next fifteen
miles, and for that distance the heavy baggage with men in charge of
the same was sent by train. I did not confess to being baggage nor was
I in charge thereof, but none the less when my ever courteous and
thoughtful colonel urged me to accompany the baggage for those few
miles I looked upon his advice in the light of a command, and so
accepted my almost only lift of any sort in the long march from the
Orange River to Koomati Poort. The full day's march for the men was
twenty-five miles through a region that at that season of the year had
already become a kind of burning fiery furnace; and the abridging of
it for me by at least a half was all the more readily agreed to
because my solitary pair of boots was unfortunately in a double sense
on its last legs. A merciful man is merciful to his boots, especially
when they happen to be his only pair.

[Sidenote: "_Rags and tatters get ye gone._"]

Nor in the matter of leather alone were these Guardsmen lamentably
lacking. One of the three famous Napier brothers when fighting at
close quarters in the battle of Busaco fiercely refused to dismount
that he might become a less conspicuous mark for bullets, or even to
cover his red uniform with a cloak. "This," said he, "is the uniform
of my regiment, and _in it I will show_, or fall this day." Barely a
moment after a bullet smashed his jaw. At the very outset of the Boer
war, to the sore annoyance of Boer sharpshooters, the British War
Office in this one respect showed great wisdom. All the pomp and pride
and circumstance of war were from the outset laid aside, especially in
the matter of clothing; but though in that direction almost all
regimental distinctions, and distinctions of rank, were deliberately
discarded, so that scarcely a speck of martial red was anywhere to be
seen, the clothing actually supplied proved astonishingly