of falling back is unique.  As soon as he smells danger, all the live stock is sent off and all the waggons.  Cape carts are kept handy for baggage that cannot be sent with the heavy convoy.  Most of the big guns go with the first flight; one or two, which can easily be shifted, are kept to hold back our advance, and the deadly little pom-poms are dodged about from kopje to kopje.  The pom-pom is not much to look at, but it is a weapon to be reckoned with in mountain warfare.  It throws only a one-pound shell, and throws it from the most impossible places imaginable.  The beauty of the pom-pom is that it drops its work in from spots from which no sane man ever expects a shell to come.

When the Boer finds that his position is untenable on account of a flanking move, the horses are hitched up to the light Cape carts, the loading is packed, and off they fly at a gallop, and the guns follow suit; whilst the rifles hold the heights.  That is why we so seldom get hold of anything worth having when we do take a position.  Our losses have been paltry, because the Boer is a defensive, not an offensive, fighter.  He waits to be attacked, he does not often attack; and our general is a man who does not throw men’s lives away.  He believes in brains before bayonets, and England may be thankful for the possession of General Rundle.  Had he been a madcap general, there would have been a few thousand more widows in the old country to-day than there are.  At the same time, he is a man of immense personality.  Should he ever get a chance to engage the enemy in a pitched battle, he will prove to the world that he is capable of great things.  There will be no half-hearted work in such an hour.  If he has to sacrifice men on the altar of war, he will surely sacrifice them, but not until he is compelled to do so.  Brabant is a wild daredevil, who rushes on like a mountain torrent Boyes is brainy; careful, and yet dashing.

I want to state here that I have never lost a single opportunity, whilst travelling through the enemy’s country, of looking at the “home” life of the people—­and I may say that I have been in a few back-country homes in America, in Australia, and in other parts of the world—­and I want to place it on record that in my opinion the Boer farmer is as clean in his home life, as loving in his domestic arrangements, as pure in his morals, as any class of people I have ever met.  Filth may abound, but I have seen nothing of it.  Immorality may be the common everyday occurrence I have seen it depicted in some British journals, but I have failed to find trace of it.  Ignorance as black as the inside of a dog may be the prevailing state of affairs; if so, I have been one of the lucky few who have found just the reverse in whichsoever direction I have turned.  After six months’, or nearly six months’, close and careful observation of their habits, I have arrived at the conclusion that the Boer farmer, and his son and daughter, will compare very favourably