ntry, and we got quite tired of
waiting for it to reach us. It reached Villiersdorp eventually, and we
fell back from Frankfort towards Bethlehem--the new headquarters. It was
with heavy hearts that we said good-bye to our kind friends in
Frankfort, for well we knew by this time what the passage of a British
column meant for the defenceless non-combatants--houses broken down and
burnt, children and greybeards torn from their families, and all the
other useless and unnecessary cruelties that have broken so many lives,
converted so many joyous homesteads into tombstones of black despair,
and imprinted into the very souls of many Afrikanders an ineradicable
loathing and hatred of everything British. As Boadicea felt towards the
Roman, so feels many a Boer matron to-day against the Briton, and when
Britons shall have followed Romans into the history of the past, the
Afrikander race shall write an epitaph upon their cenotaph. Ambition! By
that sin fell the angels, and by that sin fall the Angles. But oh, the
pity of it! For of all the nations that in turn have risen and waxed
great upon the surface of the globe, there are none for whose ideals the
Boers feel more sympathy than for those of the British. It is the
paralysing difference between the ideal and the real that is creating
the gulf which threatens our eternal separation.

OFF TO THE TRANSVAAL

When we reached Reitz, on our way to Bethlehem, another young
Transvaaler and myself obtained permission to try and reach the
Transvaal. The enemy's columns were traversing the intervening country
in all directions, but we determined that the attempt was worth making.
Bidding good-bye to our Free State colleagues, we left the little
village that was later to become famous as the scene of the capture of
the Free State Government, and retraced our way to Frankfort. The
send-off given us took the form of a little reunion in the parlour of
the modest hotel. Here there were gathered together some dozen young
Free Staters, and an impromptu smoking concert was held. Everyone
present was compelled to give a song or recite something. The first on
the programme was Byron's "When we two parted," which was sung with fine
effect by a blushing young burgher. Next came the old camp favourite,
"The Spanish Cavalier." The sentimental recollections induced by these
two songs were speedily dissipated by a rattling comic song in Dutch,
"_Op haar hot oog zit'n fratje_" A few recitations fo