From the outside the town looks as if a series of gigantic mounds had been suddenly created. At different points tiers of sandbags, several feet high, protect the more exposed places, and to these again has been added, as an exterior facing, banks of earth. Within such a position as I am now describing there is a deep trench, which is of that depth which enables a man standing upright to fire through loopholes between sacks of sand. Behind the trench is a low shelter of deals with an upper covering of sandbags, intending to serve the garrison of the fort as protection against shell fire. To those points which are exposed to the more direct attack of the enemy, a Maxim has been detached or a seven-pounder emplaced. The Town Guard man these positions: the work of patrolling, of forming Cossack posts, of maintaining the outer lines of sentries, being undertaken by the Protectorate troops and the Bechuanaland Rifles. [Illustration: Headquarters, Bomb-proof Shelter.] An elaborate system of signals has been arranged. A red flag will fly from Headquarters should the Boers be coming on, and an alarm will be rung in the centre of the town. The streets have been barricaded with carts, and all open places protected by traverses of a useful character. Mines have been placed within and without the town, and an improvised field telegraph or the telephone has been connected with every point which lies beyond the immediate precincts of the defences. Every possible precaution that human ingenuity can devise and the resources of the town supply for the protection of the place, is in order. Thus did Mafeking prepare for the Boer bombardment, and upon the Monday following this took place; but it is perhaps no exaggeration to say that nothing so ludicrous in the history of modern warfare has been propagated as the gigantic joke which Commandant Snyman, who directed the fire of the artillery, played off against us that day. For many weeks we, along this frontier, had heard what the Boers proposed to do once war should be declared. These forecasts had indeed been sanguinary; the heads of the English people, had we believed in these rumours, were to lie upon the veldt like the sand upon the sea shore. The bombardment as such was totally ineffective, and so curiously amateur, so wholly experimental, as to move one to astonishment rather than derision. It began at 9.15 a.m., and the first shell fell blind. The second and the third also pitched short, but once the bombardment had been initiated, the feelings of those who had dreaded such an event, more on account of their women and children than on account of themselves, were unperturbed. When the shells began to fall into the town it was found that they were of such poor quality as to be incapable of any explosive force whatever. Judging from their effect the area of damage was not three square feet.