The much-dreaded night passed quite quietly, and in the morning the carriage windows were thickly coated with several degrees of frost.  The engines of the Netherlands Railway, always small and weak, were at that time so dirty from neglect and overpressure during the war, that their pace was but a slow crawl, and uphill they almost died away to nothing.  However, fortunately, going south meant going downhill, and we made good progress over the flat uninteresting country, which, in view of recent events, proved worthy of careful attention.  Already melancholy landmarks of the march of the great army lay on each side of the line in the shape of carcasses of horses, mules, and oxen.  Wolvehoek was the first stop.  Here blue-nosed soldiers descended from the railway-carriages in varied and weird costumes, making a rush with their billies[40] for hot water, wherewith to cook their morning coffee, cheerily laughing and cracking their jokes, while shivering natives in blankets and tattered overcoats waited hungrily about for a job or scraps of food.  After leaving Wolvehoek, we entered on Commandant De Wet’s hunting-ground and the scene of his recent exploits.  There, at almost every culvert, at every ganger’s house, were pickets of soldiers, all gathered round a crackling fire at that chill morning hour; and at every one of these posts freshly constructed works of sandbags and deep trenches were in evidence to denote that their sentry work was no play, but grim earnest.

We next crossed the Rhenoster Spruit, and passed the then famous Rhenoster position, so formidable even to the unskilled eye, and where my military friends told me the Boers would have given much trouble, had it not been for the two outspread wings of the Commander-in-Chief’s army.  A little farther on, the deviation line and the railway-bridge were pointed out as one of the many triumphs of engineering skill to be seen and marvelled at on that recently restored line.  The achievements of these lion-hearted engineers could not fail to impress themselves even on a civilian.  Many amongst them were volunteers, who had previously occupied brilliant positions in the great mining community in Johannesburg, and whose brains were the pride of a circle where intellectual achievements and persevering resource commanded at once the greatest respect and the highest remuneration.  Some of these latter had family ties besides their considerable positions, but they gladly hastened to place their valuable services at the disposal of their Queen, and, in conjunction with the regular Royal Engineers, were destined to find glory, and in many cases death, at their perilous work.  The task of the engineers is probably scarcely realized by people who have not seen actual warfare.  We do not read so frequently of their doings as of those of their gallant colleagues on foot or on horse; but soldiers know that neither the genius of the Generals nor the intrepidity of the men could avail without