ats, in which they may take
shelter when the shelling becomes too hot. The Imperial Light Horse were
first to hit upon the idea of burrowing into the river-banks. They began
by forming mere niches, in which there was only just room enough for
three or four men to stand huddled together when they heard a shell
coming. Finding, however, that the soil could be easily dug out, they
set gangs of natives to work lengthening the tunnels and connecting them
by "cross drives," in the planning of which several Johannesburg mine
managers found congenial occupation. This went on until the river-bank
for a hundred yards in length was honeycombed by dark caves, in which a
whole regiment might have been hidden with all its ammunition, secure
from shell fire, the walls and roofs being so formed that they needed no
additional support. There was no danger of the stiff alluvial soil
falling in even if a shell had buried itself and burst above the
entrance to any of these cool grottoes.

[Illustration: A SHELL-PROOF RESORT

A culvert under a road used as a living-place by day for civilians, who
returned to their houses when the shelling ceased after sunset]

I spent half an hour in one of them, and found the air there delightful
by contrast with scorching sunshine outside. What it will be, however,
after many people have been crowded together for some time is less
pleasant to contemplate, but even for that the resourceful Imperial
Light Horse are prepared, and they already begin to talk of air-shafts
so cunningly contrived that light and air may enter, but shells be
rigidly excluded. Civilians in their turn emulate the Light Horse, but
with unequal success, and their excavations assume such primitive
forms that future archaeologists may be puzzled to invent satisfactory
explanations of curious differences in the habits of the cave-dwellers
of Ladysmith, as exemplified by the divergent types of their underground
abodes.

And, indeed, these habits are strangely various even as presented to the
eyes of a contemporary student. Some people, having spent much time and
patient labour in making burrows for themselves, find life there so
intolerably monotonous that they prefer to take the chances above
ground. Others pass whole days with wives and families or in solitary
misery where there is not light enough to read or work, scarcely showing
a head outside from sunrise to sunset. They may be seen trooping away
from fragile tin-roofed houses ha