It was to everybody's extreme surprise and delight that at noon on Thursday we received sudden orders to leave Koomati Poort at once, and to leave it not on foot but by rail. The huge baboon, therefore, which had become our latest regimental pet and terror, was promptly transferred to other custody, and our scanty kits were packed with utmost speed. We soon discovered, however, that it was one thing to reach the appointed railway station, and quite another to find the appointed train. Two locomotives, in apparently sound condition, had been selected from among a multitude of utterly wrecked and ruined ones, but serviceable trucks had also to be warily chosen from among the leavings of a vast devouring fire; then the loading of these trucks with the various belongings of the battalion began, and long before that task was finished darkness set in, so compelling the postponement of all journeying till morning light appeared. It was on the King of Portugal's birthday that morning light dawned, and it was to the sound of a royal salute in honour of that anniversary we attempted to start on our westward way, while the troops left behind us joined with those of Portugal in a royal review. [Illustration: _From a photograph by Mr Westerman_ Boer Families on their Way to a Concentration Camp.] As all the regular railway employes had fled with the departing Boers, it became necessary to call for volunteers from among the soldiers to do duty as drivers, stokers and guards. The result was at times amusing, and at times alarming. Our locomotives were so unskilfully handled that they at once degenerated into the merest donkey engines, and played upon us donkey tricks. One of these amateur drivers early in the journey discovered that he had forgotten to take on board an adequate supply of coal, and so ran his engine back to get it, while we patiently awaited his return. Soon after we made our second start it was discovered that something had gone wrong with the injectors. "The water was too hot," we were told, which to us was a quite incomprehensible fault; the water tank was full of steam, and we were in danger of a general blow up. So the fire had to be raked out, and the engine allowed to cool, which it took an unconscionably long time in doing, and we accounted ourselves fortunate in that on a journey so diversified we escaped the further complications that might have been created for us by our ever invisible foes, who managed to wreck the train immediately following ours--so inflicting fatal or other injuries on Guardsmen not a few.