(can't call it a
station) a man described a fight for a kopje just by the railway.
Coleskop was in view, a tall, flat-topped mountain, and later we
steamed into the oft-taken and retaken Colesberg Junction, and were
shown the hill where the Suffolks were cut up. All was now barren
veldt again, and the strangeness of the whole thing struck me
curiously. Why should men be fighting here? There seemed to be nothing
to fight for, and nothing behind to get to when you had fought.

"_May 22._--_Tuesday._--As I write we are standing just outside
Bloemfontein; cold, sunny morning; the Kaffir quarter just on our
right, a hideous collection of mud houses with tin roofs; camps and
stores on the left; boundless breadth of veldt beyond; the town in
front under a long, low kopje, a quiet, pretty little place.

"We reached the frontier--Norval's Pont--at 6 P.M. yesterday, and
after a long delay, moved slowly out in the dark, till the shimmer of
water between iron girders told us we were crossing the Orange river.
Once off the bridge, a shout went up for our first step on the enemy's
country. Then all went on the same. We made ourselves comfortable, and
brewed hot cocoa, for all the world as though we were travelling from
Boulogne to Geneva. The only signs of hostility were the shrill
execrations of a crowd of infant aborigines.

"We woke up to a changed country. The distances were still greater,
low hills only occasionally breaking the monotony of flat plain, but
the scrub had given way to grass, not verdant Irish grass, but sparse,
yellow herbage. Ant-hills and dead horses were the only objects in the
foreground, except eternal wreaths and tangles of telegraph wire along
the tracks, and piles of sleepers, showing the damage done, and now
repaired, to line and wire. The same pure crisp air and gentle
sunlight.

"_May 24._--_Thursday._--I write in our tent on the plateau above
Bloemfontein, and will go on where I left off on the 22nd. To our
utter disgust, after standing for hours in a siding of the station,
chatting to all sorts and conditions of the species soldier, the order
came to detrain. We drivers took the horses first to water, and then
picketed them on an arid patch of ground near the station, where the
gunners had meantime brought the guns and waggons. It was now dark,
and there were no rations served out; very cold, too, and we had no
kit, but it wasn't these things we minded, but the getting out instead
of training on.