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there is one thing I should like to say. I have often heard people who decry the soldier and all his ways, and deny the necessity of military training, point to the Boers as a proof that men who are not soldiers can defend their country in time of need. It would be difficult to find a worse argument. The Boer had in some ways received much more preparation for a soldier's work than the British soldier who fought against him. He had been brought up from his childhood to shoot and to ride and to scout. All this has to be elaborately taught to the English recruit, with what difficulty none can know who has not tried. If any one supposes that Englishmen without military training are like the splendid Boer riflemen who stormed Majuba Hill he is wofully mistaken. One can hardly imagine any material more totally different than the average English townsman or peasant and the sporting Dutch farmer. They have nothing in common but their stubborn courage. And it is to be remembered that the Boers, fine fighting men as they were individually and in small bodies, failed of eventual success precisely for want of some qualities which military training alone can give-especially discipline.

A mile or so away from the cantonment, down by the little slow Mooi River, is the town of Potchefstroom, once the capital of the Transvaal or one of its offshoot republics. It is in some ways a typical Dutch

town, with its broad open roads and canals, and its beautiful weeping willows, and its sleepy air. But among its white men are many English, who keep up an English church or two, and some excellent shops. There is a large school of nearly two hundred boys, English and Dutch, whose English headmaster tells you that the friendships and quarrels of the boys seem to run on wholly non-racial lines. There is an Industrial School, doing very good work, and an Experimental Farm, and an ostrich farm, and a trout farm; and in the grassy meadows by the river is the best eighteenhole golf course in South Africa, with grass puttinggreens instead of the usual threshing-floor of pounded anthills. It is not quite a Sunningdale yet, for the African grass is rather coarse, and the stems of the tiny iris which cover the playing-greens with lilac blossom are tough, so that one cannot do much runningup. It would suit Taylor and the English school better than Braid and the Scotch. But it is a pleasant course, with some terrible natural bunkers of water and reeds, where a long handicap man can lose an unlimited number of very expensive balls.

All around is the veldt, brown enough later on, but fairly green in these English winter months, for it is summer here, and the rain comes in summer,-sudden storms of thunder and lightning and wind, and heavy black showers, which blot out half the sun

light, and sweep over the dry face of the land like a paintbrush.

As you ride across the veldt in the early morning, past the cavalry schooling-ground, where the men are being taught to jump their horses or use their lances and swords, you will see many beautiful wild-flowers growing among the ant-hills that dot the face of the veldt with thousands of hard red mounds, trailing convolvulus, purple and yellow, the latter at a little distance curiously like an English primrose, and the brilliant yellow six-pointed stars of the "tulip," and many more of all shapes and colours. Here and there is a patch of mimosa - bush, with white or yellow blossoms, or a little piece of cultivation, over which flutters the pretty "sakabula " bird, dragging behind him an absurdly long tail which he cannot manage in a wind.

The ground is stony enough in parts, and the best-looking

places may be dangerous with rabbit - holes or rat-holes. It is better not to gallop over untried veldt. At times you

may come upon some little abandoned gold - mine, or the mouth

of an underground

cavern, once the home of wild beasts, or possibly a Dutch farm hidden in a hollow; or, invariable mark of a British cantonment, a hillock of commissariat tins. But the air 4000 feet above the sea is clear and bracing; and the ridingtracks wind away for miles over the rolling plain; and the hills stand out against the sky, treeless but beautiful with pure colour, green and rose-grey fading into blue. It all reminds one strangely of the great plateaux of Central Asia. Often I could have believed myself on the Persian plains between Tehran and Shiraz. There was the same feeling of breadth and solitude, which once known is never forgotten.

(To be continued.)

2 T

VOL. CLXXXVIII.-NO. MCXLI.

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FOR SALE. A superb 3-seated Diablement-Odorant Touring Car, 12-15 h.-p., 1907 model, with Capecart hood, speedometer, spare wheel, fanfare horn, and lamps complete. Body French-grey picked out with red. Cost £350. Will take

THE sum which the vendor was prepared to take was so startling, that to mention it would entirely spoil the symmetry of the foregoing paragraph. It is therefore deleted. The advertisement concluded by remarking that the car was as good as new, and added darkly that the owner was going abroad.

Such was the official title and description of the car. After making its acquaintance we devised for ourselves other and shorter terms of designation. I used to refer to it as My Bargain. Mr Gootch, our local cycle - agent and petrol-merchant, dismissed it gloomily as "one of them seven Oderongs." My daughter (hereinafter termed The Gruffin) christened it "Bill Bailey," because it usually declined to come home; and the title was adopted with singular enthusiasm and unanimity by subsequent passengers.

Owe

I may premise this narrative by stating that until I

purchased Bill Bailey my experience of motor mechanics had been limited to a motorbicycle of antique design, which had been sold me by a distant relative of my wife's. This stately but inanimate vehicle I rode assiduously for something like two months, buoyed up by the not unreasonable hope that one day, provided I pedalled long enough and hard enough, the engine would start. I was doomed to disappointment; and after removing the driving - belt and riding the thing for another month or so as an ordinary bicycle, mortifying my flesh and enlarging my heart in the process, I bartered unresponsive steed-it turned the scale at about two hundredweight-to Mr Gootch, in exchange for a set of new wheels for the perambulator. Teresa we called it Teresa after our first cook, who on receiving notice invariably declined to go-was immediately put into working order by Mr Gootch, who, I believe, still wins prizes with her at reliability trials.

my

To return to Bill Bailey. I had been coquetting with the idea of purchasing a car for something like three months, and my wife had definitely made

up her mind upon the subject for something like three years, when the advertisement already quoted caught my eye on the back of an evening paper. The car was duly inspected by the family en bloc, in its temporary abiding-place at a garage in distant Surbiton. What chiefly attracted me was the price. My wife's fancy was taken by the French-grey body picked out with red, and the favourable consideration of The Gruffin was secured by the idea of a speedometer reeling off its mile per minute. The baby's interest was chiefly centred in the fanfare horn.

My young friend, Andy Finch one of those fortunate people who feel competent to give advice upon any subject under the sun, -oblig

ingly offered to overhaul the engine and bearings and report upon their condition. His report was entirely favourable, and the bargain was concluded.

Next day, on returning home from the City, I found the new purchase awaiting me in the coach - house. It was a twoseated affair, with a precarious-looking arrangement like an iron camp-stool-known, I believe, as a spider seat clamped on behind. A general survey of the car assured me that the lamps, speedometer, spare wheel, and other extra fittings had not been abstracted for the benefit of the gentleman who had gone abroad; and I decided there and then to take a holiday next day and indulge the family with an excursion.

II.

THE PROVING OF "BILL BAILEY."

Where I made my initial error was in permitting Andy Finch to come round next morning. Weakly deciding that I might possibly be able to extract a grain or two of helpful information from the avalanche of advice which would descend upon me, I agreed to his proposal that he should come and assist me to "start her up."

Andy arrived in due course, and proceeded to run over the car's points in a manner which at first rather impressed me. Hitherto I had contented myself with opening a sort of

oven door in the dish - cover arrangement which concealed the creature's works from view, and peering in with an air of intense wisdom, much as a diffident amateur inspects a horse's mouth. After that I usually felt the tyres, in search of spavins and curbs. Andy began by removing the dishcover bodily-I learned for the first time that it was called the bonnet, -and then proceeded to tear up the boards on the floor of the car. This done, a number of curious and mysterious objects were exposed to view for the first

assistance of The Gruffin, we
manfully trundled our superb
1907 Diablement-Odorant out
of the coach-house, and pushed
it up the hill without mishap,
if I except two large dents in
the back of the body, caused by
the ignorance of my daughter
that what looks like solid tim-
ber may
after all be only hollow
aluminium.

time, with the functions and shortcomings of each of which I was fated to become severally and monotonously familiar. Having completed his observations, Andy suggested a run along the road. I did not know then, as I know now, that his knowledge of automobilism was about on a par with my own; otherwise I Iwould not have listened with such respect or permitted him to take any further liberties with the mechanism. How ever, I knew no better, and this is what happened. I had better describe the appointed chauffeur's efforts to results in tabular form:

12.15. Andy performs a feat which he describes as "tickling the carburetter."

12.16-12.20. Andy turns the handle in front.

We then turned the car, climbed on board, and proceeded to descend the hill by the force of gravity. Bill Bailey I must say travelled beautifully, despite my self

interfere with his movements by stamping on pedals and manipulating levers. Absorbed with these exercises, Andy failed to observe the imminence of our destination, and we

12.20-12.25. I turn the reached the foot of the hill at

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a good twenty-five miles an hour, the back wheels locked fast by a belated but wholehearted application of the hand-brake. However, the collision with the confines of my estate was comparatively gentle, and we soon disentangled the head-light from the garden hedge.

The engine still failed to exhibit any signs of life.

At this point my wife, who had been patiently sitting in the hall wearing a new motorbonnet for the best part of two hours, came out and suggested that we should proclaim a temporary truce and have lunch.

At 2.30 we returned to the scene of operations. Having once more tickled the now thoroughly depressed carbu

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