to be a judge, though apparently reliable confirmation of the same
reached me from many sources; but I do confidently assert that no
kindred accusations can be justly hurled at the men by whose side I
tramped from Orange River to Koomati Poort. Their good conduct was
only surpassed by their courage, and of them may be generally asserted
what Maitland said to the heroic defenders of Hougoumont--"Every man
of you deserves promotion."

CHAPTER XIV

FROM PORTUGUESE AFRICA TO PRETORIA

Towards sundown on Tuesday, September 24th, while most of the Guards'
Brigade was busy bathing in the delicious waters of the Koomati at its
juncture with the Crocodile River, I walked along the railway line to
take stock of the damage done to the rolling stock, and to the
endlessly varied goods with which long lines of trucks had recently
been filled. It was an absolutely appalling sight!

[Sidenote: _Staggering Humanity._]

Long before, at the very beginning of the war, the Boers, as we have
often been reminded, promised to stagger humanity, and during this
period of the strife they came strangely near to fulfilling their
purpose. They staggered us most of all by letting slip so many
opportunities for staggering us indeed. Day after day we marched
through a country superbly fitted for defence, a country where one
might check a thousand and two make ten thousand look about them. Our
last long march was through an absolutely waterless and apparently
pathless bush. Yet there was none to say us nay! From Waterval Onder
onwards to Koomati Poort not a solitary sniper ventured to molest us.
A more complete collapse of a nation's valour has seldom been seen. On
September 17th, precisely a week before we arrived at Koomati,
special trains crowded with fugitive burghers rushed across the
frontier, whence not a few fled to the land of their nativity--to
France, to Germany, to Russia--and amid the curious collection of
things strewing the railway line, close to the Portuguese frontier, I
saw an excellent enamelled fold-up bedstead, on which was painted the
owner's name and address in clear Russian characters, as also in plain
English, thus:--

P. DUTIL. ST. PETERSBURG, RUSSIE.

That beautiful little bedstead thus flung away had a tale of its own
to tell, and silently assented to the sad truth that this war, though
in no sense a war with Russia, was yet a war with Russians and with
men of almost every nationality under heaven.

[Si