denote: _Food for Flames._]

Humanity was scarcely less severely staggered by the lavish
destruction of food stuffs and rolling stock we were that day
compelled to witness. In the sidings of the Koomati railway station,
as at Kaap Muiden, I found not less than half a mile of loaded trucks
all blazing furiously. The goods shed was also in flames, and so was a
gigantic heap of coals for locomotive use, which was still smouldering
months afterwards. Along the Selati branch I saw what I was told
amounted to over five miles of empty trucks that had fortunately
escaped destruction, and later on proved to us of prodigious use.

A war correspondent, who had been with the Portuguese for weeks
awaiting our advent, assured me that the Boers were so dismayed by the
tidings of our approach that at first they precipitately fled leaving
everything untouched; but finding we apparently delayed for a few
hours our coming, they ventured across the great railway bridge in a
red cross ambulance train, on which they felt certain we should not
fire even if our scouts were already in possession of the place; and
so from the shelter of the red cross these firebrands stepped forth to
perform their task of almost immeasurable destruction. It is however
only fair to add that the great majority of these mischief-makers were
declared to be not genuine Boers, but mercenaries,--a much-mixed
multitude whose ignominious departure from the Transvaal will minister
much to its future wholesomeness and honesty.

[Sidenote: _A Crocodile in the Koomati._]

Next morning while with several officers I was enjoying a before
breakfast bathe, a cry of alarm was raised, and presently I saw those
who had hurried out of the water taking careful aim at a crocodile
clinging to a rock in midstream. Revolver shot after revolver shot was
fired, but I quickly perceived it was the very same crocodile I had
seen at that very same spot the day before; and as it was quite dead
then I concluded it was probably still dead, though the officers thus
furiously assailing it had not yet discovered the fact; so leaving
them to continue their revolver practice I quietly returned to the
bubbling waters and finished my bathe in peace.

[Sidenote: _A Hippopotamus in the Koomati._]

Later on a continuous rifle fire at the river side close to the
Guards' camp attracted general attention, and on going to see what it
all meant I found a group of Colonials had thus been popping for hours