nd long
before that task was finished darkness set in, so compelling the
postponement of all journeying till morning light appeared. It was on
the King of Portugal's birthday that morning light dawned, and it was
to the sound of a royal salute in honour of that anniversary we
attempted to start on our westward way, while the troops left behind
us joined with those of Portugal in a royal review.

[Illustration: _From a photograph by Mr Westerman_

Boer Families on their Way to a Concentration Camp.]

As all the regular railway employes had fled with the departing Boers,
it became necessary to call for volunteers from among the soldiers to
do duty as drivers, stokers and guards. The result was at times
amusing, and at times alarming. Our locomotives were so unskilfully
handled that they at once degenerated into the merest donkey
engines, and played upon us donkey tricks. One of these amateur
drivers early in the journey discovered that he had forgotten to take
on board an adequate supply of coal, and so ran his engine back to get
it, while we patiently awaited his return. Soon after we made our
second start it was discovered that something had gone wrong with the
injectors. "The water was too hot," we were told, which to us was a
quite incomprehensible fault; the water tank was full of steam, and we
were in danger of a general blow up. So the fire had to be raked out,
and the engine allowed to cool, which it took an unconscionably long
time in doing, and we accounted ourselves fortunate in that on a
journey so diversified we escaped the further complications that might
have been created for us by our ever invisible foes, who managed to
wreck the train immediately following ours--so inflicting fatal or
other injuries on Guardsmen not a few.

Meanwhile we noted that "fever" trees, with stems of a peculiarly
green and bilious hue, abounded on both sides the line; trees so
called, not because they produce fever, but because their presence
infallibly indicates an area in which fever habitually prevails.
Hundreds of the troops that followed us into the fatal valley were
speedily fever-stricken, and it is with a sense of devoutest gratitude
I record the fact that the Guards' Brigade not only entered Koomati
Port without the loss of a single life by bullets, but also left it
without the loss of a single life by fever.

At first at the foot of every incline we were compelled to pause while
our engines, one in front and one b