At Sterkstroom a line of empty trenches, the Red Cross flag over a hospital, and an extension to the cemetery enclosure filled with brown mounds which the grass had not yet had time to cover, showed that we had crossed the line between peace and war. Passing through Molteno, the last resting-place of the heroic de Montmorency, the train reached Stormburg. Scarcely any traces of the Boer occupation were to be seen; the marks of their encampments behind the ridge where they had laagered--a litter of meat tins, straw, paper, and the like, the grave of Commandant Swanepoole and several nameless heaps, a large stone (in the station-master’s possession) with the words engraved on it: ’In memory of the Transvaal commando, Stormburg, December 1899,’ and that was all. The floods had abated and receded. This was the only jetsam that remained. At Stormburg I changed my mind, or, rather--for it comes to the same thing and sounds better--I made it up. I heard that no immediate advance from Bloemfontein was likely or even possible for a fortnight. Therefore, I said, I will go to Capetown, and shelter for a week at ’The Helot’s Rest.’ After all, what is the use of a roving commission if one cannot rove at random or caprice? So to Capetown I went accordingly--seven hundred miles in forty-eight hours of bad trains over sections of the line only newly reopened. But to Capetown I will not take the reader. Indeed, I strongly recommend him to stick to the war and keep his attention at the front, for Capetown at this present time is not an edifying place. Yet, since he may be curious to know some reason for such advice, let me explain. Capetown, which stands, as some writers have observed, beneath the shadow of Table Mountain, has been--and may be again in times of peace--a pleasant place in which to pursue business or health; but now it is simply a centre of intrigue, scandal, falsehood, and rumour. The visitor stays at the Mount Nelson Hotel, if he can be so fortunate as to secure a room. At this establishment he finds all the luxuries of a first-class European hotel without the resulting comfort. There is a good dinner, but it is cold before it reaches him; there is a spacious dining-room, but it is overcrowded; there are clean European waiters, but they are few and far between. At the hotel, in its garden, or elsewhere in the town, all the world and his wife are residing--particularly the wife. We used to think, in the Army of Natal, that Lord Roberts’s operations in the Free State had been a model of military skill and knowledge, and, in a simple way, we regarded French as one of the first cavalry soldiers of the age.