Mafeking and Kimberley are fairly well garrisoned, with auxiliary volunteers, and may hold their own:  at any rate, I have not been there and can say nothing about them.  But along the southern border of the Free State—­the three railway junctions of De Aar, Naauwpoort, and Stormberg—­our position is very dangerous indeed.  I say it freely, for by the time the admission reaches England it may be needed to explain failure, or pleasant to add lustre to success.  If the Army Corps were in Africa, which is still in England, this position would be a splendid one for it—­three lines of supply from Capetown, Port Elizabeth, and East London, and three converging lines of advance by Norval’s Pont, Bethulie, and Aliwal North.  But with tiny forces of half a battalion in front and no support behind—­nothing but long lines of railway with ungarrisoned ports hundreds of miles at the far end of them—­it is very dangerous.  There are at this moment no supports nearer than England.  Let the Free Staters bring down two thousand good shots and resolute men to-morrow morning—­it is only fifty miles, with two lines of railway—­and what will happen to that little patch of white tents by the station?  The loss of any one means the loss of land connection between Western and Eastern Provinces, a line open into the heart of the Cape Colony, and nothing to resist an invader short of the sea.

It is dangerous—­and yet nobody cares.  There is nothing to do but wait—­for the Army Corps that has not yet left England.  Even to-day—­a day’s ride from the frontier—­the war seems hardly real.  All will be done that man can do.  In the mean time the good lady of the refreshment-room says:  “Dinner?  There’s been twenty-one to-day and dinner got ready for fifteen; but you’re welcome to it, such as it is.  We must take things as they come in war-time.”  Her children play with their cats in the passage.  The railway man busies himself about the new triangles and sidings that are to be laid down against the beginning of December for the Army Corps that has not yet left England.

III.

A pastor’s point of view.

     An ideal of Arcady—­rebel Burghersdorp—­its monuments—­Dopper
     theology—­an interview with one of its professors.

Burghersdorp, Oct. 14.

The village lies compact and clean-cut, a dot in the wilderness.  No fields or orchards break the transition from man to nature; step out of the street and you are at once on rock-ribbed kopje or raw veldt.  As you stand on one of the bare lines of hill that squeeze it into a narrow valley, Burghersdorp is a chequer-board of white house, green tree, and grey iron roof; beyond its edges everything is the changeless yellow brown of South African landscape.