There were two guns-one a muzzle-loader, and one a Hotchkiss-which were intended for Kimberley, but were stopped here because Kimberley was cut off from communication. To be sure there were the men of the Army Service Corps and of the Royal Engineers, numbering 125 more combatants, making less than a thousand fighting men in all, with two guns. In other words, until four days ago, one thousand men here were under sentence of death, or ignominious surrender, whenever the Boers should have chosen to deliver judgment.

Fancy a capital “O” split apart at the top and bottom. Fancy the letter made by hills, and the space between a wide, long, level tract of sage-brush and sand, with the Cape lying at the further end of hundreds of miles of desert. Fancy the Orange River sixty miles away, with two thousand five hundred men holding the bridge over it, and a battalion of one thousand men broken into five bodies of troops isolated at as many points-all, except the force at the Orange River, inviting certain destruction. Remember, too, that not only the Boers of the Free State and the Transvaal were to be feared, for we were in an enemy's country, to all intents and purposes. This is the Cape Colony of Great Britain; but it is, in the spirit of the majority of its inhabitants, not to be likened, thank Heaven, to any other of her Majesty's colonies. Were the hills around De Aar held by our troops

and fortified? The farthest ones-to the eastward— wcre. The nearer ones, dominated by a magnificent elevation from which shot could have been fired into this camp from mediæval guns of wood, were left open to any who might choose to take and intrench them. This, then, was the predicament of De Aar at the beginning of the Boer rebellion. Every man there daily expected attack, and no one but the Omniscient Ruler of all destinies can conceive why an attack was not made.

As the time went on, however, the situation improved. General Sir Redvers Buller's arrival at Capetown was followed by the abandonment of Colesburg and Naauwpoort, two of the many villages in which small forces had been kept at the mercy of the Boers. The concentration of these troops at this point immediately succeeded, and we gained a battery and a half (nine guns of the latest pattern), and four hundred men of the Berkshire Regiment.

Major-General Wood of the Engineers, arrived at about the same time, and instantly the commanding hills to the west, close!, overlooking the camp, bristled with men digging trenchments and erecting de

fences for rifle fire and guns.

These opportune changes distinctly encouraged the brave fellows entrusted with the care and accumulation of stores for the many regiments which were to come, and which were to advance from here for the prompt settlement of this war.

At least two thousand strong in combatant force, we had something like a dozen guns, with the hills fortified and manned by day and night. We formed redoubts of earth, of forage, and of biscuit boxes, as well as many trenches on the level ground between the hills. We could sleep with the consciousness that we were able to make a stiff opposition to the enemy, though we still needed mounted infantry. If we had such a force, and three thousand more fighting men, we might have the sweeter assurance of not being compelled to suffer very great slaughter, or submit to the necessity of surrendering these stores, which would prolong the war against us for weeks were they to fall into the enemy's hands. Thus we were thankful for many things, among them being the knowledge that the precarious past was gone by, that the Boers had missed their best chance, and that we could give a good account of ourselves when those hovering round should call us into battle.

We had another change wi ich chimed in well with the improvement of our defend we were put under martial law. What this form o. government entails will be understood from the following copy of the regulations posted up at the station and the post-office :

1. Martial law has been proclaimed in De Aar. The following camp regulations will come into immediate operation:

2. No person is allowed to remain in or to quit De

Aar without a permit signed by the magistrate, and countersigned by the camp commandant.

3. The permits for railway officials [this is a railway centre] will be signed and issued by the heads of the traffic, loco. and engineering departments; for postal officials by the head of that department.

4. Any person found selling intoxicating liquor to a soldier, or to a native or coloured person, will be immediately apprehended, and the whole of his goods seized.

5. The sale of intoxicating liquor to others can only take place between the hours of 11 a.m. and 6 p.m. This includes the sale of liquor to persons staying in any hotel or boarding-house in De Aar.

6. Every person keeping house or a boarding-house, or receiving any one into his private house to stay for one night or more, is required to obtain the permission of the camp commandant before doing so.

7. No person other than railway and postal officials will be allowed, without a special pass, out of their houses after half-past 9 p.m.

8. Any person infringing these regulations will be dealt with by martial law.

This proclamation was ordered by the Major-General commanding, and thus a very necessary change, tending to exclude Boer sympathisers from the camp, also dated from the arrival of General Buller and the instalment here of Major-General Wood.

CHAPTER X

HEADQUARTERS DURING A BATTLE

THE very mechanical routine of life at an advance post like De Aar, where a few troops simply hold stores for others who are to come, grows almost as tiresome as watching the sails of a windmill for days at a time. So I ran down to Orange River, sixty miles, and was rewarded by scenting the first aroma of battle on this side of the seat of war.

My idea was simply to see this outpost on the frontier, to walk over into the enemy's country if possible, and to compass the place in my mind's eye, in order to understand whatever might happen there in days

to come.

A friend who knew Colonel the Hon. G. H. Gough went with me early in November to pay his respects to the commandant. The same veldt reaches all the way from De Aar to the river-a plain littered with tufts of wild sage and pimpled with hills, some large as forty Olympias in a row, and cut off flat on their tops; others mere bosoms of the plain, smooth and gracefully rounded. But the sage grew greener and