Next day we were off to the south on a narrow dust-laden track. We were an infantry column, a column made up of variously dressed soldiers of different races, a column of various kind and equipment, eloquent of the brotherhood of colonies. We streamed out in column of route, after scouts had preceded us by half an hour or so. The 129th Baluchis, olive-hued Indian soldiers in turbans and loose-kneed trousers, were in advance; then their maxim battery of gunners and side-burdened, bridle-led mules. Then came the 29th Punjabis, another regiment of similar kind, followed closely by some battalions of South African artillery—a bold array of gun-carriages and ammunition wagons, each drawn by eight span of sturdy South-American-bred mules, and driven by reckless Cape boys mounted on the line of near mules. Then followed more infantry, the 25th Royal Fusiliers, of familiar face and colour, of our own kind, but soiled and sunburnt with long exposure; the 1st King’s African Rifles, well-trained natives of stalwart appearance, khaki-clad as the rest, but with distinctive dark-blue puttees and light close-fitting headgear. And so on, and so on, down the line, except that one might mention the ammunition column in the rear, a long line of two-wheeled carts, drawn by two span of patient, slow-gaited oxen. In the rear, trailing far behind, came the miscellaneous transport—some motors, large four-wheeled mule-wagons, Scotch carts, and water carts, an assortment of varied, somewhat gipsy-like kind. The wagons, which were most in evidence, and which carry from three thousand to four thousand pounds, were drawn by ten span of mules, or by sixteen to twenty span of oxen, and all were ordered and driven by capable management of men from South Africa, who had long experience in trekking in their own country. In all it was probably a column of a fighting strength of from 4,000 to 5,000 men, with its necessary large following of accoutrements. When the column reached far out into the grass-grown, sandy plain—for it was open highland here—one could look back, almost as far as the eye could distinguish, and see the course of the column, as the fine line of a sinuous thread drawn across the blank space of an incomplete map! To-day, the map was marked; to-morrow, the thin dust-line would be gone onward, and the desert veldt would again lie reposed in vagueness. Thus did we leave our harbour of safety to venture far into the enemy’s country on “the long trek”; to travel amidst dust, and dryness, and heat, for many days.