"No! It's just as if the giants of old had made a furnace at the top of the kopje, and had been pouring the red-hot clinkers down the side." "Or as if it was the slope of a volcano, and those were the masses of pumice which had fallen and rolled down." "So that we look like a couple of flies walking amongst lumps of sugar. Well, yours is a good simile, but not so romantic as mine. That's a deep crack, Drew, old chap. Like to see how far in it goes?" "No, thanks. I want my dinner," said Lennox. "Dinner! Mealie cake and tough stewed horse." "Wrong," said Lennox; "it's beef to-night, for I asked." "Beef! Don't insult the muscle-giving food of a Briton by calling tough old draught-ox beef. I don't know but what I would rather have a bit of _cheval_--_chevril_, or whatever they call it--if it wasn't for that oily fat. But we might as well peep in that crack. Perhaps there's a cavern." "Not to-day, Bob. It's close upon mess-time." "Hark at him! Prefers food for the body to food for the mind. Very well. Go on; I'm at your heels." They descended to the more level part of the granite-strewn eminence, acknowledged the salutes of the sentries they passed, and soon after reached the mean-looking collection of tin houses that formed the village--though there was very little tin visible, the only portion being a barricade or two formed of biscuit-tins, which had been made bullet-proof in building up a wall by filling them with earth or sand. The _tin_ houses, according to the popular term, were really the common grey corrugated iron so easily riveted or screwed together into a hut, and forming outer and partition walls, and fairly rain-proof roofing, but as ugly in appearance as hot beneath the torrid sun. Groenfontein consisted of a group of this class of house ranged about a wide market-square, while here and there outside were warehouses and sheds and a few farms. Bob Dickenson said it was the ugliest and dirtiest place that ever called itself a town; and he was fairly right about the former. As to the latter, it might have been worse. Its greatest defect was the litter of old meat and other tins, while there were broken bottles enough to act as a defence when attacked by strangers. The Boer inhabitants had for the most part fled; those who were left lived under the protection of the British force, which they preferred to being out on commando, using rifle, and risking their lives. The empty houses left by the former inhabitants had at once been taken possession of for officers' and soldiers' quarters; the long warehouses and barns for stabling; and a big wool warehouse, happily containing many bales of wool, had been turned into mess and club room, the great bales making excellent couches, and others forming breastworks inside the windows and the big double doors.