* * * * * THE WEARY TREK. Trek, trek, trek, On the wild South African veldt, With anthills here and anthills there And holes and ruts, you're inclined to swear, For your mokes will religiously take you o'er These impediments by the score, But you trek, trek, trek. Trek, trek, trek, With a heart as heavy as lead, For the comrades who have bit the dust Whilst fighting for a cause that's just, With bootless feet and clothing torn, From chilly night to dewy morn You trek, trek, trek. Trek, trek, trek, There's nothing to do but trek, While your mules half starved and done to death, And yourself ditto and out of breath, You wish to Heaven the war was o'er And you say sweet (?) things of the cunning Boer, But you trek, trek, trek. * * * * * GO TO ---- STELLENBOSCH!! _To the Editors of_ "THE FRIEND," SIRS:--In the course of a lengthy experience I have heard many quaint conceits and many hard swear words, and have kept a small notebook in which I have jotted down anything especially new. I was the unwilling auditor the other day of a quarrel between two individuals whose rank and profession shall be nameless. The conversation became very animated, and finally one exclaimed with savage irony, "Oh, go to Stellenbosch!" Fortunately some passers-by interrupted the fracas or else I verily believe blows would have been exchanged. Now you, sirs, with your opportunities of knowing many lands and varied languages, may perhaps be able to inform me where this place is and why the request to go there should have caused such fury and such agitation on the part of the individual addressed. It will be a relief to the consciences of Her Majesty's lieges if the time-honoured "D----" can be relegated to the limbo of forgotten oaths in favour of such an apparently innocent expression. I write in all innocence, as no man likes to use a phrase, especially such a potent one, without understanding its meaning.-- Faithfully yours, CHIRIOGICUS. [We believe that the place mentioned was located somewhere in the Arctic Regions by the Jackson expedition.--EDS.] CHAPTER VIII LORD ROBERTS'S HEADQUARTERS _Like a beehive for industry when Rudyard Kipling went to lunch with the Field-Marshal._ Rudyard Kipling was paying visits and getting acquainted with the local situation. He had left his wife and family at the far-famed Mount Nelson Hotel--the "Helot's Rest," as a statesman had called it--with its strange assembly of Rand and Kimberley millionaires, and other refugees from the two republics, its army officers, both of the invalid and the idle class, its censors, war correspondents, sight-seers, and ladies longing to get to the more exciting front.