een weak enough to
have been accompanied by a cable-cart. Lord Wolseley may cavil at
correspondents and call them the curse of modern armies; but we are
constrained to think that if a tired staff-officer were consulted he
would save the cream of condemnatory epithets for the cable-cart,
which makes his night horrible with useless telegrams. The nightmare
of that midnight message, with its probable four pages of closely
written ciphers! Those fine popinjays in starched kerseys and pink
frills, who live in luxury at railway centres, think that it adds to
their dignity if they convert their most trivial messages into cipher.
Little do they consider the poor tired being whom they rob of
hard-earned rest to open out that cipher. It pleases them. They have
nothing to do in the evenings. The codeing of a message to them is of
the nature of an after-dinner game of backgammon. But to the aching
head that has to decode it in the small hours of the morning by the
fitful light of a grease-wallowing dip it is no game, no pastime. The
cable-cart may have its uses; but many a score of worn-out
staff-officers must have blessed the grass fire which has destroyed
the ground-wire in their rear, and thus given them a few hours of
unbroken rest.

After orders and the minutiae of brigade duties came intelligence. The
only building at Houwater Drift is a ramshackle half-way house--a
familiar landmark of the veldt. This _winkel_ was managed by a
half-bred German; the farm inadequately protected from the elements
half-a-dozen greasy Dutch _fraus_ of various ages and a single
decrepit black boy. Here indeed was a fund of information,--such being
the channels through which the British Intelligence usually is worked.
The Divisional Intelligence first took them in hand. Then "A" column,
then "B" column, and lastly our own ranged them before the
witness-table. It would have taken a veritable K.C. to have sorted the
truth from the aggregate of falsehood which had been arrived at by the
time it was our turn. The Intelligence officer had taken possession of
the showrooms of the _winkel_ to serve him as an office. This
Shoolbred of the veldt was but a sordid shelter--walls and counter of
mud; floor, sun-dried cow-dung and sand. Ranged upon the shelves was
a strange medley of merchandise. All edibles had been removed by the
Boers; there only remained what we believe the trade terms hard and
soft goods. A pile of stinking sheep-skins, a few rolls of
que