. The Petersberg railway
runs up here, and this was a station on it, with a few houses besides.
Its only interest is the cage in which several thousand English
prisoners were kept, till released by Roberts' arrival. I visited it
on the way to a delicious bathe in the river after tea. It is a large
enclosure, full of the remains of mud huts, and fitted with close rows
of tall iron posts for the electric light, which must have turned
night into day. It is surrounded by an elaborate barbed-wire
entanglement. In one place was a tunnel made by some prisoners to
escape by. It began at a hole inside a hut, and ran underground for
quite forty yards, to a point about five yards outside the enclosure.
Some of our chaps passed through it. In a large tin shed near the
enclosure was a fine electric-lighting plant for lighting this strange
prison on the open veldt.

This morning the Captain came back, to our great delight. He had been
away since Winberg, getting stores for us at Bloemfontein. He brought
a waggon full of clothing and tobacco, which was distributed after we
had come in. There were thick corduroy uniforms for winter use. If
they had reached us in the cold weather they would have been more
useful. It is hot weather now; but a light drill tunic was also served
out, and a sign of the times was stewed dry fruit for tea. The ration
now is five biscuits (the full ration) and a Maconochie, or bully
beef. Only extreme hunger can make me stomach Maconochies now. They
are quite sound and good, but one gets to taste nothing but the
chemical preservative, whatever it is. We have had no fresh meat for a
long time back, but one manages with an occasional change of bully
beef or a commandeered chicken.

The camp is a big one, for infantry reinforcements have come in, and
two cow-guns.

_August 20._--There was no hour appointed for reveille overnight, but
we were wakened by the pickets at 2.30 A.M. At once harnessed up, and
marched off without breakfast. Went north still, as yesterday,
following the railway. Dawn came slow, silent, and majestic into the
cloudless sky, where a thin sickle of waning moon hung. It was a
typical African dawn, and I watched every phase of it to-day with
care. Its chief feature is its gentle unobtrusiveness. About an hour
before sunrise, the east grows faintly luminous; then just one arc of
it gradually and imperceptibly turns to faint yellow, and then
delicate green; but just before the sun tops the vel