Lord, let me linger here,
                    For this is bliss.

A man is very seldom hurt at this game, though how he escapes without a broken neck is one of the wonders of gravitation to me.  One second you see the poor beggar in mid air, going like a circular saw through soft pine.  Just when you are beginning to wonder if he has converted himself into a catherine-wheel or a corkscrew, he straightens himself out horizontally, remains poised for the millionth part of a second like a he-angel that has moulted his wings; then down he dives perpendicularly like a tornado in trousers, skinning forehead, nose, and chin as he kisses the drum-like surface of the hide.  No, on the whole, I do not consider it healthy to try to fool with a married woman in a Boer fighting laager, apart altogether from the moral aspect of the affair.  If some of the amorous dandies I wot of, who claim kindred with us, got the same sort of treatment in Old England, many a merry matron would be saved much annoyance.

For rank disobedience of orders, brutality of conduct, cowardice in the face of the enemy, flagrant neglect of the wounded, or any other very serious military crime, the punishment is sjamboking, which is simply flogging, as it existed in our Army and Navy not so many years ago.  On board ship they used to use the “cat,” a genteel instrument with a handle attached.  The Boer sjambok is a different article altogether; it has not nine tails, but it gets there just the same.  The sjambok dear to the Boer soul is that made out of rhinoceros hide.  It is a plain piece of hide, not twisted in any way; just clean cut out and trimmed round all the way down.  It is about three feet long, and at the end which the flogger holds it is about two and a half inches in circumference, tapering down gradually to a rat-tail point.  It is a terrible weapon when the person who wields it is bent on business, and is not manufacturing poetry or mingling thoughts of home and mother with the flogging.  Truth to tell, I don’t think they do much flogging—­not half as much as they are credited with—­but when they do flog, the party who gets it wants a soft shirt for a month after, and it’s quite a while before he will lie on his back for the mere pleasure of seeing the moon rise.

Battleof Constantia farm.

ThabaNchu.

The Battle of Constantia Farm will not rank as one of the big events of this war, but it is worthy of a full description, because in this battle the Briton for the first time laid himself out from start to finish to fight the Boer pretty much on his own lines, instead of following time-honoured British rules of war.  Before attempting to portray the actual fighting, I think a brief sketch of our movements from the time we left the railway line to cross the country will be of interest to those readers of The Daily News who desire to follow the progress of the war with due care.