Of the uneventful dulness of their life in the prisoners’ camp, where few visitors ever came, and none whose presence could be considered very cheerful, we may judge by the fact that hardly anything has been written about it. The poor fellows who had neither money nor friends to procure it for them must have fared ill indeed on nothing but Government rations issued according to the following scale, which cannot be impugned, seeing that the Editor found it written in choicest official Dutch among other documents at Pretoria bearing the seal of the Z.A.R. On this scale the officers were to receive 1 lb. of meat and an undefined ration of meal, rice, or peas, per head per day, with a weekly allowance of groceries amounting to 2 oz. of coffee, 2 oz. of tea, and one candle per head. In practice the meat ration dwindled down at times to as little as 1½ lb. a week for each officer, and the meal, rice, or peas being _à discrétion_, not of the consumer but of the burgher in charge, were occasionally off the bill of fare altogether. The rank-and-file were each to receive 7 lb. of flour, 3 lb. of meal, 3 lb. of rice, 3 lb. of dried French beans, 21 oz. of sugar, 2 oz. of salt, 3½ oz. of raw coffee beans, and 2 lbs. of meat _per week_, and had to see that they got it, as the Boers, being rather short of luxuries themselves, claimed the right to make reductions frequently on the plea that there had been an excessive issue for some previous day. Actually at one time the prisoners at Nooitgedacht, to whom the same scale applied, did not receive more than an average of 3 lb. of flour and ½ lb. of meat per head per week, and the beans, which formed their only vegetable diet, were useless. The captives among whom a few of Lumsden’s Horse found their lot cast at Waterval were not so badly off as that, but still there was so much monotony, both in food and in the featureless routine of daily life, that they must have been very glad to hear the booming of British guns outside Pretoria and to know that the hour of their deliverance from bondage was at hand. A few days after the entry of our troops into the capital, Colonel Lumsden had the gratification of writing: Lieutenant Crane’s many friends in India will be pleased to hear that he is once more with us and in command of his section, looking stout and well, none the worse for his wound or his enforced stay in Pretoria. Sergeant Fraser, Corporal Angus McGillivray, Privates R.N. Macdonald, Peterson and Leslie Williams are also back with us, all looking fit and strong. Lance-Corporal Firth is at present employed in the Financial Adviser’s office in Pretoria, and has made himself so useful that I cannot persuade General Maxwell, the Military Governor, to dispense with his services. CHAPTER XI _TOWARDS PRETORIA—LUMSDEN’S HORSE SCOUTING AHEAD OF THE ARMY FROM BLOEMFONTEIN TO THE VAAL RIVER_