with them big white-tented
ox-waggons for conveying ammunition, commissariat stores, and such extra
luggage as some might wish to carry; and these were sent ahead as soon as
the field-cornet, the military leader of the ward, learned that all his
men had arrived from their homes. The individual hunters then formed what
was called a commando, whether it consisted of fifteen or fifty men, and
proceeded in a body to a second pre-arranged meeting-place, where all the
ward-commandos of a certain district were asked to congregate. When all
these commandos had arrived in one locality, they fell under the authority
of the commandant who had been elected to that post by the burghers at the
preceding election. This official had received his orders directly from
the Commandant-General, and but little time was consumed in disseminating
them to the burghers through the various field-cornets. After all the
ward-commandos had arrived, the district-commando was set in motion toward
that part of the frontier where its services were required; and a most
unwarlike spectacle it presented as it rolled along over the muddy,
slippery veld. In the van were the huge, lumbering waggons with hordes of
hullabalooing natives cracking their long raw-hide whips and urging the
sleek, long-horned oxen forward through the mud. Following the
waggon-train came the cavalcade of armed lion-hunters, grim and
determined-looking enough from a distance, but most peaceful and
inoffensive when once they understood the stranger's motives. No order or
discipline was visible in the commando on the march, and if the rifles and
bandoliers had not appeared so prominently it might readily have been
mistaken for a party of Nachtmaal celebrants on the way to Pretoria. Now
and then some youths emerged from the crowd and indulged in an impromptu
horse-race, only to return and receive a chiding from their elders for
wasting their horses' strength unnecessarily. Occasionally the keen eyes
of a rider spied a buck in the distance, and then several of the
lion-hunters sped obliquely off the track and replenished the commando
larder with much smaller game than was the object of their expedition.

If the commando came from a district far from the frontier, it proceeded
to the railway station nearest to the central meeting-place, and then
embarked for the front. No extraordinary preparations were necessary for
the embarking of a large commando, nor was much time lost before the
hunt