I therefore rode down to our own police post, and reported that I was taking a horse over the border, for which I had obtained the requisite permission before leaving Upington; thence I rode on to the German post, and had to give minute particulars as to who and what I was, whence from, and whither bound, to the little trooper in charge there. I had had several chats with the little chap before; he spoke French extremely well, and was, I believe, an Alsatian. Anyway he was a very obliging chap, and quite unlike the uncouth, brutal troopers of the regiment stationed at Ukamas. This ordeal over, and a full description of both myself and my horse entered in the _Ne Varietur_ kept for the purpose, I rode the eighteen miles into the little frontier town over good, well-defined roads laid out by the military, and with a valuable aid to the traveller at every cross-road in the shape of a stone signpost giving distance and direction to inhabited places in the locality. Ukamas, although but a tiny village, and a very long distance from the railway at Kalkfontein, was certainly a credit to the Germans, the post-office, houses, and barracks being attractive-looking, substantially built edifices, most of them, I was given to understand, having been built by the military stationed there, many of whom were artisans. There was one Englishman in the place, a Jew store-keeper, who had at one time been in the British Army, and who was on that account baited in the most intolerable manner by the officers and soldiers who were the principal customers of his bar. From this little outpost I was able to send a cable to Cape Town, the post-office operator being, like every other official in the place, a soldier. Here my horse had to be handed to the military vet, for the _mallin_ test, and I was kept kicking my heels for some days in the forlorn little stores, where every evening the rough troopers, in their long blue-grey greatcoats, congregated to drink beer and play _scart_, smoking the big cigars that form part of their rations, and cracking alleged jokes at the expense of the little Jew landlord and of the rough-looking prospector sitting so quietly in a corner. These men, however, rough and overbearing as they were, were harmless compared with their officers, who drank to excess in front of their men, and whose intolerable treatment of the Englishman behind the bar used to compel me to get out and right away from them, lest I should be unable to control myself and get into trouble.