Various little incidents occurred.  This one amused me at the moment.  We had captured a herd of cattle from some niggers who had been sent by the Boers to drive them in, and I was conveying them to the rear.  From a group of staff officers a boy came across the veldt to me, and presently I heard, as I was “shooing” on my bullocks, a very dejected voice exclaim, “How confoundedly disappointing.”  I looked round and saw a lad gazing ruefully at me, with a new revolver tied to a bright yellow lanyard ready in his hand.  “I thought you were a Boer,” he said, “and I was going to shoot you.  I’ve got leave to shoot you,” he added, as though he were in two minds about doing the job anyway.  I looked at him for a long while in silence, there seemed nothing to say, and then, still ruefully, he rode away.  This, you will understand, was right up our end of the valley, and I was driving cattle on to our ground, only I had a soft hat on.

We have plenty of youngsters like this; brave, no doubt, but thoughtless and quite careless about the dangerous qualities of the men they have to meet.  “They’ll live and learn,” people say.  They’ll learn if they live, would perhaps be nearer the mark.  The Boers, on the other hand, such as I have seen yet, are decidedly awkward-looking customers, crafty, but in deadly earnest, versed in veldt wars and knowing the country to an anthill.  Looking from one to the other, I fear there are many mothers in England who’ll go crying for their boys this campaign.

Later a troop of us penetrated into the deep recess among the hills where they had their laager.  It seemed evident, from the number of waggons and the amount of clothing and stores left behind and littered in every direction, that the Boers had not expected to be shifted nearly so suddenly as they were.  There were heaps of provisions, quantities of coffee tied up in small bags, sugar, rice, biltong, i.e. dried strips of flesh, a sort of bread biscuit much used by them on the march, and made at the farms, and other things.  All were done up in small quantities in such a way that individual men could carry it.  There were waggons loaded, or half loaded, with old chests and boxes, and many heaped about the ground.  Most contained clothes, and the place was strewn in all directions with blankets, greatcoats, and garments of all sorts, colours, and sizes.  I annexed a very excellent black mackintosh, quite new and splendidly lined with red; a very martial and imposing garment.

Diligent search was made for any paper or memoranda, which might show the plans or strength of the enemy, but all we found were the love-letters of the young Boers, of which there were vast numbers, extremely amusing.  It never seems to have occurred to any of the writers that they could be going to get the worst of it.  They seem to put the responsibility for the management of the whole campaign into the hands of the Deity.  They are religious but practical.