unfeigned rejoicing. It must here be noted that while the column was moving from Buck Reef Farm to Jan Massibi's, Colonel Plumer's force was approaching the same point from the north, and beautifully, like the grooves of a Chinese puzzle, the two relief parties met together about 5 A.M. Colonel Plumer was accompanied by his regiment of Rhodesians, some 350 of them, who for five months, under exceptional difficulties of climate and conditions, had been untiring in their efforts to hold back the enemy in their attempt to invade Rhodesia _via_ Tuli, and in their determination to retain the Bulawayo Railway for over 200 miles south of the Rhodesian border in British hands. This diminutive force, though it had achieved so much, had been powerless for want of guns to achieve still more. Colonel Plumer, in addition to Colonel Spreckley and others who had been fighting with him, was accompanied now, by a battery of Canadian Artillery, under Major Hudon (an officer whose delicate French accent gave a refining touch to the British tongue), and some 200 Queenslanders. How Colonel Plumer came into possession of the valuable addition to his troops must be described. It may be remembered that a force called the Rhodesian Field Force, numbering some 5000 men and 7000 horses, under the command of Lieutenant-General Sir Frederick Carrington, was originated to provide against the contingency of an attack on Rhodesia from the south, and to avert any plan on the part of the Boers to migrate or escape to the north. It was composed mainly of Colonial troops, and placed in charge of a general whose unequalled experience of the country through which he was travelling and fighting made him unusually valuable. Besides Colonials were some 1100 Yeomanry, a company of the Lancashire, Belfast and Dublin's, and Lord Dunraven's Sharpshooters. [Illustration: MAP SHOWING THE ROUTE FOR THE RELIEF OF MAFEKING FROM THE NORTH.] While Sir Frederick Carrington was at Capetown he, knowing that Colonel Plumer's force was weak in artillery, devised a scheme for helping him. He made an arrangement with Mr. Zeederberg--the well-known Rhodesian coach-owner and a first-rate type of the Colonial Dutchman--by which the guns before named and escort were to be conveyed by mail coaches to the Rhodesian column. Mr. Zeederberg accompanied the General to Beira, and there telegraphed to Rhodesia suspending the ordinary mail service (conveying passengers and mails from Salisbury and Bulawayo), and diverting the mules to the Marandellas-Bulawayo Road. That done, no sooner had the troops steamed from Beira to Marandellas than the men were transferred to the stage-coaches and the mules were hitched to the guns, and thus the force was got to Bulawayo twenty days earlier than they would have done if moved in the ordinary manner.