"Our men, sitting upon the parapets, held a friendly conversation with a detachment of the enemy, and an enterprising photographer endeavoured to get them into line while he photographed them, but they were evidently suspicious, and feared the temptation to turn a Maxim upon them instead of a camera would prove too great. Small parties appeared throughout the day, and amicable relations were maintained until dark." The Boers outside were a hardy and stalwart lot, brawny and uncouth and unkempt, though from a distance not unpicturesque. In their rough-and-tumble attire no two were alike. Some were slouching in velveteen coats and soft felt hats, others in black jackets with "billycocks," and all with the inevitable well-worn neckerchief that some one suggested might "come in handy for turtle soup." Their bandoliers and their Martini and Mauser rifles gave them a certain uniformity of aspect, but otherwise they seemed the most motley gang that the hands of fate could have shuffled together. Some of the Boers did not approve of the camera, and were inclined to suspect the British of attempting dodges equal to their own, but others took a pride in being portrayed. A remarkable, almost a pathetic, feature of Mafeking fighting was the strange ability of both sides to fraternise when hostilities were suspended. The fact was that the combatants were linked together by ties of relationship so mysteriously interwoven that the fights partook of the nature of civil war--brothers and cousins-in-law, and, in one case, two brothers, contending on either side of the battlefield. Naturally, when the bloody business of their lives was ended, they were inclined to foregather, to compare losses and make kindly inquiries strangely inconsistent with the trend of their antagonistic pursuits. The Colonel further reported:--