pleasure. All
the time the train rolls through the wilderness, with its myriad
ant-hills, its ribbon of empty biscuit tins and dead horses, its
broken bridges, its tiny outpost camps, like frail islands in the
ocean, its lonely stations of three tin houses, and nothing else
beyond, no trees, fields, houses, cattle, signs of human life. We
stopped all last night at Zand River. All trains stop at night now,
for the ubiquitous De Wet is a terror on the line. To-day we passed
the charred and twisted remains of another train he had burnt; graves,
in a row, close to it. Williams and I slept on the ground outside the
truck, after feeding and watering horses and having tea. It was an
uneasy slumber, on dust and rubble, interrupted once by the train
quietly steaming away from beside us. But it came back. We were off
again at 4.30 A.M., a merry crowd heaped together under blankets on
the floor of the truck. We ground slowly on all day, and halted for
the night at Viljoen's Drift, the frontier station.

_August 14._--Sleepy heads rose from a sea of blankets, and blinked
out to see the crossing of the Vaal river, and a thin, sleepy cheer
hailed this event; then we relapsed and waited for the sun. When it
came, and we thawed and looked about, we saw an entire change of
country; hills on both sides, trees here and there, and many farms.
Soon the upper works of a mine showed, and then more, and all at once
we were in a great industrial district. At Elandsfontein, the junction
for Johannesburg, we had a long halt, and a good breakfast, getting
free coffee from a huge boiling vat.

_(9 P.M.)_--We reached Pretoria just at dusk, the last five miles or
so being a very pretty run through a beautiful pass, with woods and
real _green_ fields in the valley, a refreshing contrast to the
outside veldt. We detrained by electric light, and bivouacked in an
open place just outside the station. I write this in the station bar,
where some of us have been having a cup of tea. Paget's Brigade are
all here, and I hear Roberts is to review us to-morrow. A Dublin
Fusilier, who had been a prisoner since the armoured-train affair at
Estcourt until Roberts reached Pretoria, told us we "had a good name
here," for Bethlehem, etc. He vaguely talked of Botha and Delarey
"dodging round" near here. We have heard nothing of the outside world
for a long time, and as far as I can make out, the Transvaal has still
to be conquered, just as the Free State has had to