If we can accomplish even so little, it maybe possible to prevent the no small proportion of the colonists discharging their obligations to the Crown by combining with the Boer forces. To this end our efforts will have to be seriously directed, and the sooner this simple fact is realised by the authorities in South Africa as in London, the more convincing will the scope and measures of our policy become. At present it is chimerical, and we hesitate. CHAPTER III ON THE ORANGE FREE STATE BORDER THE CAMP, DE AAR, _September 23rd, 1899_. Africa was streaming past the dusty windows of the railway carriage, presenting an endless spectacle of flat, depressed-looking country, with here and there a hut, here and there a native. I am in the earliest stages of a journey which should lead to Ramathlabama, and the command of Colonel Baden-Powell. Slowly and with much effort the train drags itself along; the road is steep, the carriages hot and uncomfortable, and there is nothing to attract attention, nothing to fill the emptiness of the mind. I slept at intervals, to awaken at some roadside station where fussy people were struggling to eat too much in too short a space of time. There, for a moment, was the scamper of bustling, hurrying passengers, who pushed and menaced one another in a thirsty rush to the refreshment room; with a cloud of officers, orderlies, and troopers I stood apart, listless, bored, and travel-stained, feebly interested, more feebly talking in disconnected phrases, until, with shrill blasts of his whistle, the guard signalled the departure of the train. Then off again, the jerking, swaying flight of eighteen miles an hour--the rumbling monotony of express speed which was conducive to drowsiness and nothing more. The landscape faded in the distance, a raucous voice sang of 'Ome, while, in a monotonous buzz of nothingness, I slept again. The train was slowly thrusting itself forward as, with much panting and purring and some screaming, it cut the borders of the Great Karoo. Slowly the wheels clenched the metals as the waggons rocked in a lullaby of motion, and the passengers were fanned with draughts of scented air. The Great Karoo, lying in the shades of evening, hearkening to the secret calling of mysterious voices, heeding not the ravages of time, wearing majestically the massive dignity of its grandeur, threw back its barriers of resistance to our intrusion and delighting our senses with ever-changing and oft-recurring glimpses of its beauty. But the picture faded with the passing of the train, the golden and crimson delights of the overgrowing flowers gave place to a soulless expanse destitute of beauty.