While Lord Roberts was organising troops and rearranging the distribution of the forces in South Africa, while day by day battalions, and batteries, and squadrons poured in from England, the rough material with which to build the edifice of the new campaign, Lord Kitchener on his part was busy with the transport and discipline of the army. Rumour has it that he impounded some score of gay young officers whom he found at Capetown with leave from the front, and set them to drive quills in his quartermaster's department. This did not make him beloved, but it proved he was determined that all should do their duty. He ruthlessly cut down the allowance of transport, took away from the regiments their regimental waggons, and organised a separate and distinct transport service. He found that the train of waggons had been much scattered, and one of his first acts was to recall about 400 teams and vehicles from Queenstown in the east of the Colony. The work of organisation and preparation to which he devoted his time was neither glorious nor particularly interesting, but it was necessary if the army was to be able to move away from the railways, and he accomplished it with success, even if after events did not prove all his innovations to have been judicious. [Illustration: PREPARING FOR THE GREAT CAMPAIGN. Lord Roberts in his travelling headquarters waggon. The photograph was taken while the Field-Marshal was in the midst of the work of reorganisation.] [Sidenote: FEB. 6, 1900.] _Preparations at Capetown Completed._] [Sidenote: Roberts and Kitchener leave Capetown.] Till the time came for striking, and striking hard, Lord Roberts' instructions to his commanders in the western field of war were to abstain from anything calculated to bring about a decisive battle; 30,000 men were already at sea or arriving in Cape Colony--among them the Sixth and Seventh Divisions, the City Imperial Volunteers, several Militia battalions, the first detachments of Yeomanry, and a large number of Australian and Canadian Mounted Rifles. Of the troops already on the spot, a considerable number were being converted into mounted infantry. Thus week after week passed in the most strenuous activity, till at last, on February 6, the Commander-in-Chief and his Chief-of-the-Staff stole off surreptitiously--for there were many thousands of Boer sympathisers in the Colony, and attempts to derail and wreck trains were of almost daily occurrence--to the far-away Modder River Camp, whence the great movement was to begin. To deceive would-be assassins, of whom, unfortunately, there were many in the Colony, a special train with fifty armed men on board was ostentatiously despatched. Lord Roberts, however, did not travel in it; instead, he boarded the ordinary train outside Capetown, and in this manner began his journey to the north. [Illustration: [_Photo by Lloyd, Pembridge Square._ BRIGADIER-GENERAL BRABANT.