against whom the moment before we had been fighting, but from time to time, as we were waiting for the wounded to be brought up, the conversation was reopened between us. The attitude of the Boers around us was one of stolid composure, not altogether unmixed with sympathy. At one time almost one hundred had assembled around those who were dressing the wounded. With their rifles upon their backs and two bandoliers crossing each other upon their chests, they appeared a stalwart body of men; for the most part they were big and burly, broad in their shoulders, ponderous in their gait, and uncouth in their appearance, combining a somewhat soiled and tattered appearance with an air of triumph. Their clothing was an ill-assorted array of patterns and materials, altogether incongruous and out of keeping with the campaign upon which they were then engaged. Some of them, with quite unnecessary brutality, had doffed their own rifles and bandoliers, in order that they might show and swing somewhat aggressively before our notice, the spoils of the battlefield. In this manner they sported Lee-Metford rifles and bandoliers containing Mark II. and Mark IV. ammunition. But for the most part they behaved with a certain decorum, and it may be that the weapon which they bore was the silent confirmation of the Field Cornet's words. Here and there they made some attempt to rob the wounded and despoil the dead, but when I remonstrated with the Field Cornet he expressed, with every appearance of sincerity, his very keen regret, ordering the transgressors from the field, and explaining that he was unable to accept the responsibility for such acts, since, although they had instructions to respect the dead, the younger men were so unruly as to be beyond his control. The Field Cornet proceeded to assert that the acts of his men were neither so barbarous nor so inhuman as those which our own soldiers had committed after the battle of Elandslaagte, where, he said, Imperial troops had stripped the body of General de Koch, leaving him to lie upon the field wounded and naked, and adding that we were morally responsible, and held as such by every right-minded person in the Transvaal and Orange Free State, for the subsequent death of the Boer general. This opinion was loudly endorsed by a number of the enemy, who had collected around us, one of whom stated that he had received orders from Commandant Botha to take possession of any effects which were found upon the bodies of the wounded or dead. I referred this man's statement to the Field Cornet, when quite a lively altercation in Dutch ensued. The Field Cornet denied that any such order had been given by Commandant Botha, and that, had any orders at all been given, they referred merely to papers and to the removal of side arms and ammunition. I pointed out to him the bodies of five of our men whose pockets had been turned inside out, and who were at that moment being brought up under an escort of the enemy.