has become quite the accepted fashion to draw a simile between Mafeking and hell, and to give the early Christian fathers full credit for their powers; they were nevertheless quite incapable of imagining a punishment so deliberate as the mental and physical torture of a siege. To use a colonial colloquialism, "we went in blind," but one experience is sufficient to guarantee that every member of the garrison just now would put a thousand miles between him and the next beleaguered town. In the situation itself there is nothing to write about, it so constantly repeats itself until the absolute monotony of the days settles down upon the nerves, depressing one's spirit like a wet blanket. The Boers still fire at us, and we still sit tight, nursing our hopes by a sublime confidence in the relief column. If we be sceptical at times, we endeavour not to take our scepticism too seriously, and we talk airily about the date by which the van will have arrived here. But in reality there are but few people who believe in the practical existence of any relief column. CHAPTER XXXIV THE EPICUREAN'S DELIGHT MAFEKING, _April 30th, 1900_. We have duly celebrated the two hundredth day of the siege, and if one examines closely into the condition of a town which has withstood the attacks of the enemy during two hundred days, it is to find a spirit that is strong and self-reliant among the garrison and to realise the sadness of the picture which presents the aspect of a town slowly passing into ruin. The ravages of the siege have in no way been so prominent as has been the case during the last few weeks. Mafeking of yore was somewhat stately, although it was merely a colonial up-country centre, possessing nothing which was grandiose or even elegant. But its calm and unruffled dignity sprang from clusters of stately trees around which it had sprung up, and from which in these days of tempest and adversity it snatches something of their independence, something of their indifference to the press of battle. But now it is almost a treeless town, and it is difficult to go anywhere without meeting the signs by which one may read the stress and privation which a siege imposes upon a beleaguered village. Mafeking was never a tiny town; it rambles too far over the veldt to be considered even compact, but these natural features are now greatly aggravated by the ruin which has fallen upon the outlying areas of the town, causing even the most central streets to be disorderly in appearance. From a very early date in the siege we have been accustomed to the spectacle of ungainly structures stretching across those thoroughfares which were exposed to the enemy's fire. These traverses were among the earliest preparations of the war, but now, in addition to these, at frequent intervals in the streets one comes across shelter-pits which have been excavated in the various thoroughfares. These protections against the enemy's shell and rifle