Now commenced a different phase of warfare. If, in the constant fighting of the Natal campaign, the regiment had been called upon to prove its fighting capabilities--a call to which their noble response earned them encomiums wherever they went--they were now to be called upon to prove another essential of the true soldier--their mobility. And well they proved it. Day after day, week after week, the tired, footsore, but stout-hearted column-of-route made its slow and wearisome way over the apparently limitless expanse of the swelling veld. And how monotonous that veld can be none can appreciate save those who have experienced its deadly sameness. Ahead, behind, all round, nothing but veld, veld, veld. No trees, no hills, no rivers, no lakes, no houses, no inhabitants! Here and there, perhaps, a miserable shanty of the sealed-pattern South African type: rough stone walls and corrugated-iron roof, a room on each side of the door, a narrow verandah--occasionally occupied by a quiet, peaceful-looking old patriarch, with a grey beard, and an air savouring rather of the pulpit than the sheltered side of a boulder--a scraggy tree or two, and a lick of water in a 'pan'--or pond as we should call it--hard by; a woman, some children, and a couple of goats; a few mealie cobs yellowing on the roof, and a scared, indignant, and attenuated fowl. Alas! how those quiet-looking, quiet-spoken old gentlemen, open Bible on knee, deceived us. Oh, no! they had never wished for war. Fight? yes; they had fought, and surrendered, and taken the oath, and hoped never to fight again. Peace? yes; they wanted peace, and urged us to hasten on and conclude it. The same story everywhere: in the villages as in the solitary hamlets. A vast, empty, forsaken wilderness, with nothing more bellicose than a lean and hungry boar-hound or two. And yet for two long years to come this very country, over which the battalion trekked so peacefully, fifes and drums playing, officers out on the flanks shooting, mess-president cantering miles away in quest of eggs and their producers, was to be the scene of many a hard-fought fight and many weary nights of outposts. Indeed, it never really succumbed to the very end; the happy hunting-ground of the gallant De la Rey, it was a thorn in the side of our leaders up to the day the Delegates came in.