The surrender occupied the next three days; our total bag 4100, I am told. I wish you could have been there. It was a memorable sight among those uninhabited and lonely mountains. The heights of Basutoland, ridge behind ridge, to right of us; the tops snow streaked; groups of excited Basutos riding about in the plains, watching our movements; to left the great mountain chain we had fought our way through; and in the midst spread over the wide saddle-backed hill, that slopes away north-eastward, and breaks up in a throng of sharp peaks and a jumble of inaccessible-looking hills in the direction of the Golden Gate, is drawn up the dirty, ragged, healthy, sun-scorched British army with greasy rifles in its blackened hands, watching imperturbably and without much interest, the parties of Boers, and waggons, and droves of cattle as they come meandering in. Each Boer, as he rides up, hands over his rifle, or more often flings it angrily on the ground, and the armourers set to work, smashing them all across an anvil. Rather a waste of good weapons it seemed, I must say. Many of the Boers were quite boys, about fourteen or fifteen. They are much better looking than you would think from the men. The men are big and well built, but they look, for the most part, stupid and loutish, and when this is not so, their expression is more often cunning than intelligent. The amount of hair about their face, too, and their indifference to washing, does not improve their appearance. However, in the boy stage, and before the dulness of their surrounding has had time to tell, they are quite different, frank-faced and manly, with clear skin, tall and well grown, like young larches. It does seem strange that such mere children should be in the field against us. What would you think of giving Puckie a rifle and sending him out to fight? Boer prisoners have told me that the courage of these boys could be relied on; they were often braver, and would stick to a position they had been placed in longer than the men. They showed traces of the experience they had been through, though. Not only in being deeply tanned and more or less ragged and thin, but by an unmistakable expression (in many instances) in their faces and in their eyes; a dilated look, as of one who sees something appalling before him, and braces himself to face it out. Considering what it is to be exposed to lyddite and shrapnel fire (the absolute hell of din and concussion besides rain of bullets), one doesn't wonder that it leaves marks on young faces. R. and I rode eastward through the hills in the Golden Gate direction, meeting parties of Boers, waggons, Cape-carts, &c., coming straggling in. It reminded me of the road to Epsom on a Derby morning. There is some pleasure in meeting Boers on these terms. "Good morning. How are you? A pleasant morning for a ride, is it not?" "Good morning, sir; it is fine now, but I think we shall have rain later." That's what I like. There's nothing like a little urbanity.