n khaki-coloured cloth of almost the
same description as that worn by the soldiers whom they intended to fight.
These two commandos were composed of town-folk who had absorbed many of
the customs and habits of the foreigners who were in the country, and they
felt that it would be more warlike if they should wear uniforms made
specially for camp and field. The old Boers of the towns and the takhaars
looked askance at the youth of Pretoria and Johannesburg in their
uniforms, and shook their heads at the innovation as smacking too much of
an anti-republican spirit.

Like Cincinnatus, the majority of the old Boers went directly from their
farms to the battlefields, and they wore the same clothing in the laagers
as they used when shearing their sheep or herding their cattle. When they
started for the frontier the Boer farmers arranged matters so that they
might be comfortable while the campaign continued. Many, it is true,
dashed away from home at the first call to arms and carried with them,
besides a rifle and bandolier, nothing but a mackintosh, blanket, and
haversack of food. The majority of them, however, were solicitous of their
future comfort and loaded themselves down with all kinds of luggage. Some
went to the frontier with the big, four-wheeled ox-waggons and in these
they conveyed cooking utensils, trunks, boxes with food and flour,
mattresses, and even stoves. The Rustenburg farmers were specially
solicitous about their comfort, and those patriotic old takhaars
practically moved their families and household furniture to the camps.
Some of the burghers took two or three horses each in order that there
might be no delay or annoyance in case of misfortune by death or accident,
and frequently a burgher could be seen who had one horse for himself,
another for his camp utensils and extra clothing, and a third and fourth
for native servants who cooked his meals and watched the horses while they
grazed.

Without his horse the Boer would be of little account as a fighting man,
and those magnificent little ponies deserve almost as much credit for such
success as attended the campaign as their riders. If some South African
does not frame a eulogy of the little beasts it will not be because they
do not deserve it. The horse was half the Centaur and quite the life of
him. Small and wiry, he was able to jog along fifty and sixty miles a day
for several days in succession, and when the occasion demanded it, he was
able to atta