Less pleasant reminiscences were furnished by the decomposing bodies of several mules, and four or five vultures wheeling over the plain. Some enthusiasts on our train had on the previous journey cut off several hoofs from the dead mules as relics of the fight. Our under-cook had secured a more agreeable souvenir of Belmont in the shape of a small goat found wandering beside the railway. This animal now struts about a garden in Capetown with a collar suitably inscribed around its neck, and the proud owner has refused a L10 note for it. Before their abandonment of the position the enemy had hurriedly buried a few of their dead, but it is very difficult to dig amongst the stones and boulders, and the interment was so inadequate that hands and feet were protruding from the soil. In fact several of our men whose patrol-beat covered this ground told me it was terribly trying to walk among these rough and ready graves in the heat of the day. Along the whole line from Belmont northwards and to some distance southwards the telegraph lines had been cut by the Boers. Not content with severing the wires here and there, they had cut down every post for miles along the railway. I wondered what the grinning Kaffirs thought of such a spectacle; here were the white men, the pioneers of enlightenment, engaged in cutting each other's throats and destroying the outward signs of their civilisation! Perhaps it is worth mentioning that native opinion in Cape Colony has, as far as can be judged from the native journal _Imvo_, been decidedly against us in the present war. This is a factor which must be reckoned with as regards the question whether or no blacks shall be armed and permitted to share in the fighting. Of course it seems at first sight perfectly fair to give the Zulus or Basutos the means of defending themselves from cattle-raiding Boers, but if you once arm a savage there is a very real danger of his getting out of control, and Zulus might make incursions into the Free State or Basutos into Cape Colony. From such things may we be preserved! There is an intensely strong feeling amongst colonial Englishmen as well as Dutchmen--much more intense than anything we feel at home--against the bringing of natives into a quarrel between white men.