Before daybreak in the morning of April 21, Lumsden’s Horse were roused to pack kits and saddle up for their march. Impartial observers said they were very smart about it, but a story went round that the Colonel had expressed himself as much disappointed with B Company, saying that the others would have saddled up and walked round them three times. This was apparently only a playful invention, but it so angered one trooper that he could only express his feelings in choice Hindustani. He was mollified afterwards on learning that A Company had really admired the soldierly way in which B Company got ready, and then he excused his strong language by writing, ‘I understand now the expression “Swear like a trooper.” We hear and do more of it every day.‘ It was a painful confession for one of Lumsden’s Horse to make, but the incident, apparently trivial, shows that a wholesome spirit of emulation in deeds was animating the men, and that would always be regarded by soldiers as ample atonement for unnecessary rivalry in linguistic attainments. The time was close at hand, too, when Lumsden’s Horse would have more serious things to think about than these. Yet nobody knows better than old campaigners how little things occupy the thoughts of men even when they are doing great deeds. No opportunity for achieving greatness came to the corps during its first day’s march through a country where the enemy’s appearance might be looked for at any moment, but in another way the men showed their fitness for a soldier’s work—by helping the transport out of difficulties. It was in crossing a drift at the Little Modder River that carts stuck with wheels jammed tightly in deep holes between slippery boulders, and teams floundered in fruitless attempts to recover their footing. The Editor, having been in one of those holes, horse and all, has reason to remember the place and the swirl of water where it rashes over rocky ledges into a deeper pool. By dint of manful work, Lumsden’s Horse got their carts clear of the drift, only to find them axle deep in the treacherous soil of a neighbouring vlei some minutes later. Then ammunition had to be taken out and carried to firm ground and carts lifted bodily out of the mire. It was an experience by which the transport drivers learned not to trust appearances and to beware of grass that looked unusually green. Still, as Sergeant Stephens, of the Transport, wrote in relating his experiences, ‘If anything ever frightened our drivers it was the word “drift”; you should have seen the worried looks when they heard there was a drift ahead.’ That night the corps bivouacked beyond Glen, where General Tucker’s division had been in touch with the enemy for nearly a month and warding off frequent attempts to interfere with Engineers who were hard at work on a ‘deviation’ near the ruined railway bridge. There they had to bivouac with nothing but blankets to protect them from the bitterly cold