with hand outstretched in the awkward Boer fashion.  The Dutch do not shake hands; they simply extend a wooden member, which you clasp, and the greeting is over.  I had to go through this performance in perfect silence with about seven or eight children of various ages, a grown-up daughter, and eight or ten men, most of whom followed us into the poky little room which appeared to serve as a living-room for the whole family.  Although past ten o’clock, the remains of breakfast were still on the table, and were not appetizing to look at.  We sat down on chairs placed in a circle, the whole party commencing to chatter volubly, and scarcely a word being intelligible to me.  Presently the vrow brought me a cup of coffee in a cracked cup and saucer.  Not wishing to give offence, I tried to swallow it; the coffee was not bad, if one could only have dissociated it from that dreadful breakfast-table.  I then produced some cigarettes, and offered them to the male element.  They were enchanted, laid aside their pipes, and conversed with more animation than ever; but it was only occasionally that I caught a word I could understand; the sentence “twee tozen Engelman dood"[32] recurred with distressing frequency, and enabled me to grasp their conversation was entirely about the war.  I meanwhile studied the room and its furniture, which was of the poorest description; the chairs mostly lacked legs or backs, and the floor was of mud, which perhaps was just as well, as they all spat on it in the intervals of talk, and emptied on to it the remains of whatever they were drinking.  After a short time a black girl came in with a basin of water, with which she proceeded to plentifully sprinkle the floor, utterly disregarding our dresses and feet.  Seeing all the women tuck their feet under their knees, I followed their example, until this improvised water-cart had finished its work.  The grown-up daughter had a baby in her arms, as uncared for as the other children, all of whom looked as if soap and water never came their way.  The men were fine, strong-looking individuals, and all were very affable to me, or meant to be so, if I could but have understood them.  Finally four or five more women came into this tiny overcrowded room, evidently visitors.  This was the finishing stroke, and I decided that, rested or not, the mules must be inspanned, that I might leave this depressing house.  One of the young burghers brought me the pass to General Snyman, the caligraphy of which he was evidently very proud of; and having taken leave of all the ladies and men in the same peculiar stiff manner as that in which I had greeted them, I drove off, devoutly thankful to be so far on my journey.  About four in the afternoon we came to a rise, and, looking over it, saw the white roofs of Mafeking lying about five miles away in the glaring sunlight.  Then we arrived at the spot where General Cronje’s laager had been before he trekked South, marked by the grass being worn away for nearly a square mile,