toilette they jar painfully.  Kipling somewhere describes a subtle and complex odour, which, he says, is the smell of the great Indian Empire.  That of the great African Empire in this year of grace is the direct and simple one which I have indicated.  In the evening we had a grand supper of fried eggs, jam, chupatties, and cocoa.  This meal immediately followed tea.  We made our fire in the best place for one, an ant-hill, about two feet high.  The plan is to hack two holes, one in the top, another on the windward side, and to connect the two passages.  There is then a fine draught, and you can cook both on the top and at the side.  Inside, the substance of the hill itself gets red-hot and keeps a sustained heat.

Recipe for jam chupatties.—­Take some suet and melt rapidly in a mess-tin, over a quick fire (because you are hungry and can’t wait); meanwhile make a tough dry dough of flour and water and salt; cut into rounds to fit the mess-tin, spread with jam, double over and place in the boiling fat; turn them frequently.  Cook for about ten minutes.  A residual product of this dish is a sort of hard-bake toffee, formed by the leakage of jam from the chupatties.

Brabant’s Horse left in the night.

August 7.—­A bitterly cold, windy day.  Marched for several hours over a yellow, undulating plain and camped, near nothing, about 12.30.  After dinner I walked over to a Kaffir kraal and bought fuel, and two infants’ copper bangles.  I was done over the bangles, so I made it up over the fuel (hard round cakes of prepared cow’s dung), filling a sack brim-full, in spite of the loud expostulations of the black lady.  They were a most amusing crowd, and the children quite pretty.  I also tasted Kaffir beer for the first, and last, time.  Kaffir bangles abound in the Battery.  In fact, you will scarcely see a soldier anywhere without them.  The fashion is to wear them on the wrist as bracelets.  They are of copper and brass, and often of beautiful workmanship.  The difficulty about collecting curios is that there is nowhere to carry them, though some fellows have a genius for finding room for several heavy bits of shell, etc.  Empty pom-pom shells, which are small and portable, are much sought after; and our own brass cartridge, if one could take an old one along, would make a beautiful lamp-stand at home.  Rum to-night.

August 8.—­Reveille at six.  Off at 7.30.  Another march over the same bare, undulating plain.  About eleven we passed a spruit where there was a camp of infantry and the 9th Field Battery, who told us they came out when we did, but had only fired four rounds since!  Near here there was a pathetic incident.  A number of Boer women met us on the road, all wearing big white linen hoods; they stood in sad groups, or walked up and down, scanning the faces of the prisoners (we were with the main body today) for husbands, brothers, sweethearts.  Many must have looked in vain.  The Boers have systematically concealed losses even from the relatives themselves; and one of the saddest things in this war must be the long torture of uncertainty suffered by the womenfolk at home.