transport, and, as the latter only move very slowly, they marched all night and did not arrive at Spytfontein—the halting-place, nineteen miles distant—till about 3 A.M. Fortunately, there was brilliant light from the new moon; otherwise the slow progress with refractory mules would have been dreary indeed. As it was, we marched along as silently as possible, and had the feeling that we might be attacked at any moment. The Kaffir drivers, however, could not be restrained from shouting in shrillest notes and cracking their long rhinoceros-hide thongs with sounds like rifle-shots as they ran to head off wayward stragglers. All night long the red dust rose from the hoofs of those 600 mules in stifling clouds. This is a most desolate-looking country, miles beyond miles without passing a single human habitation. Towards the end of the march, whether through sheer exhaustion or from the effects of the moonbeams (one of our sages started this theory next day), half the men went to sleep in their saddles. I was one of the somnolent ones, and my horse took me several yards in front of the main body, and I awoke with a start to hear my companions silently chuckling at the situation. The only remedy was to get off and march alongside our horses, and several of us did this. Natives told us afterwards that Boers had been hanging on our flanks all through that march, and the only thing that saved us was our water-cart, which they mistook for a gun-carriage. The Boers must have changed a good deal since then if they could be so easily deceived.