The scenery was always the same there--rolling stretches of sun-browned veldt, kopje upon kopje, wonderfully shadowed, patches of thornscrub, and, clothing the banks of rivers and streams, strips of forest; the climate cold by night and hot by day. Africa is a queer, baffling, changeable country. Exactly the same scene can take on absolutely different aspects at different hours in the day. The thorn-tree flowers into a white brush with a sweet smell, and in the early morning, with a whitish haze hanging over and a cool wind blowing, the country seems beautiful and the trees appear as though laden with apple blossoms. Yet, in the hard, hot light of midday, with inky shadows outlined and the dust settling on the trees, the same place is ugly and repellent. On these patrols we moved by night, and failed to sleep by day, because the patch of shade that will remain shaded for even a few hours is non-existent. I usually woke to find my body too hot to touch and my water-bottle on the boil. Later, when the South African forces came over and we got going, we had easier times, could travel by day, and lost that feeling of being little veldt-mice creeping out of our holes. Once patrol was over and we were "home" in camp, we led a curious life, half soldier, half country gentleman. We lived in roomy _bandas_, or grass huts, a section in each, and as nearly every trooper had a "boy," or native servant, our meals were brought to the _banda_, and we clubbed together for luxuries. Also, we picked up our own sections, so that if four pals elected to go through the war together, they got the O. C. to fix it up. Leave was the one thing that really mattered--those ten glorious days when you went back to your own life, and bathed daily and ate what you wanted to, instead of what you could get. No one minded night-rides across the veldt with that end in view, and I have slept very comfortably under the stars, with my saddle for a pillow, dreamily wondering if the lion in the distance was making that noise because he was hungry or because he had had too much to eat. Once in Nairobi, you bought a silk shirt, and could display the trousers with the crease in them and the socks that mother sent you. You wallowed in your bath, and walked down Government Road pretending that you had never shovelled damp earth out of a trench or groomed an accumulation of sticky African mud off a truculent mule. In the afternoon you sat in the fashionable tearoom and ate cakes and sweets and ices, and in the evening there was a dance, and you met the dearest girl. It was all like heaven!