The brief winter season seems already ended and over, so far as the crisp, bracing atmosphere is concerned. For many days past it has been not only very hot in the sun, but a light hot air has brooded over everything. Not strong enough to be called a hot wind, it is yet like the quivering haze out of a furnace-mouth. I pity the poor trees: it is hard upon them. Not a drop of rain has fallen for three months to refresh their dried-up leaves and thirsting roots, and now the sun beats down with a fiercer fire than ever, and draws up the drop of moisture which haply may linger low down in the cool earth. Cool earth, did I say? I fear that is a figure of speech. It almost burns one’s feet through the soles of thin boots, and each particle of dust is like a tiny cinder. I think regretfully of the pleasant, sharp, frosty mornings and evenings, even though the days are lengthening, and one may now count by weeks the time before the rain will come, and fruits and vegetables, milk and butter, be once more obtainable with comparative ease. What I most long for, however, is a good pelting shower, a down-pour which will fill the tanks and make water plentiful. I am always rushing out in the sun to see that the horses and the fowls and all the animals have enough water to drink. In spite of all my care, they all seem in a chronic state of thirst, for the Kafirs are too lazy and careless to think that it matters if tubs get empty or if a horse comes home too late to be led down to the river with the rest. The water that I drink myself—and I drink nothing else—would give a sanitary inspector a fit to look at, even after it has passed through two filters. But it goes through many vicissitudes before it reaches this comparatively clean stage. It is brought from the river (which is barely able to move sluggishly over its ironstone bed) through clouds of dust. If the Kafir rests his pails for a moment outside before pouring their contents into the first large filter, the pony, who is always on the lookout for a chance, plunges his muzzle in among the green boughs with snorts of satisfaction; the pigeons fly in circles round the man’s head, trying to take advantage of the first favorable moment for a bath; and not only dogs, but even cats, press up for a drop. This is because it is cool, and not so dusty as that in pans outside. There is not a leaf anywhere yet large enough to give shade, and the water outside soon becomes loathsomely hot. Of course it is an exceptionally dry season. All the weather and all the seasons I have ever met with in the course of my life always have been quite out of the ordinary routine. Doubtless, it is kindly meant on the part of the inhabitants, and is probably intended as a consolation to the new-comer. But I am too well used to it to be comforted. Even when one comes back to dear old England after three or four years’ absence, and arrives, say, early in May, everybody professes to be amazed that there should be a keen east wind blowing, and apologizes for the black hard buds on the lilac trees and the iron-bound earth and sky by assurances that “There have been such east winds this year!” Just as if there are not “such” east winds every year!

After these last few amiable lines it will hardly surprise any one to hear that this is the irritating hot wind which is blowing so lightly. You must know we have hot winds from nearly opposite quarters. There is one from the north-east, which comes down from Delagoa Bay and all the fever-haunted region thereabouts, which is more unhealthy than this. That furnace-breath makes you languid and depressed: exertion is almost an impossibility, thought is an effort. But this light air represents the healthy hot wind, a nice rasping zephyr—a wind which dries you up like a Normandy pippin, and puts you and keeps you in the most peevish, discontented frame of mind. It has swept over the burning deserts of the interior, and comes from the north-west, and I can only say there is aggravation in every puff of it. The only person toward whom I feel at all kindly disposed when this wind is blowing is Jim. Jim is a new Kafir-lad, Tom’s successor, for Tom’s battles with Charlie became rather too frequent to be borne in a quiet household. Jim is such a nice boy, and Jim’s English is delightful. He began by impressing upon me through Maria that he had “no Inglis,” but added immediately, “Jim no sheeky.” Certainly he is not cheeky, but, on the contrary, the sweetest-tempered creature you could meet with anywhere. He must be about sixteen years old, but he is over six feet high, and as straight as a willow wand. To see Jim stride along by the side of my little carriage is to be reminded of the illustrations to the Seven-League-Boots story. At first, Jim tried to coil and fold and double his long legs into the small perch at the back of the pony-carriage, but he always tumbled out at a rut in the road, and kept me in perpetual terror of his snapping himself in two. Not that there are many ruts now in my road, I would have you know. It is all solid dust, about three feet deep everywhere. A road-party worked at it in their own peculiar way for many weeks this fall, and the old Dutch overseer used to assure me with much pride every time I passed that he “vas making my ladyships a boofler road mit grabels.” Of course it was the queen’s highway at which he and his Kafirs dug, but it pleased him to regard it as my private path, and this gave him greater courage to throw out “schnapps” as a suggestion worthy of my attention.

Will you believe me when I declare that in spite of all these weary weeks of drought, in spite of this intense blaze of burning sunshine all through the thirsty day, the long stretches of the blackened country are showing tender green shoots round the stumps of the old rank grass burned away long ago? It seems little short of a miracle when one sees the baked earth, hard as a granite cliff, dry as a last year’s bone, and through its parched, pulverized surface little clumps of trefoil are springing everywhere, and young blades of grass. On the mulberry trees, too, the buttons have burst into tufts of dainty leaves, which assert themselves more and more every day, and herald that wealth of freshest greenery in which Natal was clad over hill and dale when first I saw her last November. Then I could not take in that the smiling emerald downs which stretched around me could ever be the arid desolate wasteland they now appear; and now I can scarcely summon up faith enough to believe in the miracle of the spring resurrection close at hand, of which these few lonely leaves and blades are the sign and token.

Yes, Jim’s English is very droll—all the more so for his anxiety to practice it, in spite of his protestations to the contrary. Jim is a great meteorologist, unlike the majority of Kafirs, from whom you can extract no opinion whatever. They say the rain-doctor is the proper person to determine whether it is going to be fair or foul weather. I have asked Charlie whether it was going to rain when the heavy clouds have been almost over our heads, just to hear what he would say; and Charlie has answered with Turkish fatalism, “Oh, ma’, I doan know: if it like to rain, it will, but if it don’t, it won’t.” Now, Jim does proffer an opinion, expressed by a good deal of pantomime, and Jim is quite as often right as most weather-prophets. Jim studies the skies on account of getting and keeping his wood-heap dry, and prides himself on neat stacks of chopped-up fuel. I gave Jim an orange the other day, and he took it in the graceful Kafir fashion with both hands, and burst forth into all his English at once: “Oh, danks, ma’: inkosa-casa vezy kind new face, vezy. Jim no sheeky: oh yaas, all lite!” His meaning can only dimly be guessed at, especially about the new face. I wish with all my heart I could get a new face, for this one is much the worse for the South African sun and my inveterate habit of loitering about out of doors whenever I can, and spending most of my waking hours in the verandah.

August 4.

Since I last wrote there has not been much loitering out of doors, nor has any one who could possibly avoid doing so even put his nose outside. The hot zephyr I alluded to three days ago suddenly changed to a furious hot gale, the worst I have ever seen—hotter than a New Zealand nor’-wester, and as heavy as a hurricane. The clouds of dust baffle description. The direction, too, from whence it came must also have changed, for a sort of epidemic of low fever is hanging about, and the influenza would be ludicrous from the number of its victims if it were not so disagreeable and so dangerous. All the washermen and washerwomen in the whole place are ill, the entire body of Kafir police is on the sick list, all one’s servants are laid up—Charlie says pathetically, “Too moch plenty cough inside, ma’”—and everybody looks wretched. The “inkos” which one hears in passing are either a hoarse growl or a wheezy whisper. When you consider how absolutely dry the atmosphere must be, it is difficult to imagine how people catch such constant and severe colds as they do here. I am bound to say, however, that except with this influenza a cold does not last so long as it does in England, but I think you catch cold oftener; and the reason is not far to seek. In these hot winds, or out of the broiling midday sun, some visitor rides up from town, and arrives here or elsewhere very hot indeed. Then he comes into a little drawing-room with its thick stone walls and closed, darkened windows, and exclaims, “How delightfully cool you are here!” but in five minutes he is shivering; and the next thing I hear is that he has cold or fever. Yet what is one to do? I have to keep in-doors all day: I must have a cool room to sit in; and as long as one has not been taking exercise out of doors, it does no harm.

The gale of hot wind seemed to set the whole place on fire. I should not have thought a tussock had been left anywhere, but every night lately has been made bright as day by the glare of blazing hillsides. Then I leave my readers to imagine the state of a house into which all these fine particles of soot filter through ill-fitting doors and windows, driven by a furious hurricane. The other morning poor little G—— ’s plate of porridge set aside to cool in the dining-room, with every door and window closed, had a layer of black burnt grass on the top in five minutes; and the state of the tablecloth, milk, etc. baffles description. Indeed, one’s life is a life of dusting and scrubbing and cleaning generally, if a house is to be kept even tolerably tidy in these parts.

I forget if I have ever told you of the spiders here. They are another sorrow to the careful housewife, spinning webs in every corner, across doorways, filling up spaces beneath tables, flinging their aËrial bridges from chair to chair—all in a single night—and regarding glass and china ornaments merely as a nucleus or starting-point for a filmy labyrinth.

August 10.

Every now and then, when I give way to temper and a hot wind combined, and write crossly about the climate, my conscience reproaches me severely with a want of fairness when the weather changes, as it generally does directly, and we have some exquisite days and nights. For instance, directly after I last wrote our first spring showers fell—very coyly, it is true, and almost as if the clouds had forgotten how to dissolve into rain. Still, the very smell of the moist earth was delicious, and ever since that wet night the whole country has been

and except in the very last-burnt patches a faint and hesitating tinge of palest green is stealing over all the bleak hillsides. My poor bamboos are still mere shriveled ghosts of the fair green plumes which used to rustle and wave all through the drenching summer weather, but everything else is pushing a leaf here and a shoot there wherever it can, and, joy of joys! there has been no dust for a day or two. All looks washed and refreshed: parched-up Nature accepts this shower as the first installment of the deluge which is coming presently. In the mean time, the air is delicious, and even the poor influenza victims are creeping about in the sunshine. The Kafirs have suffered most, and it is really quite sad to see how weak they are, and how grateful for a little nourishing food, which they absolutely require at present.

I took advantage of the first of these new spring days, with their cool air, to make a little expedition I have long had on my mind. From my verandah I can see on the opposite hills, at about my own lofty elevation of fifty feet or so, the white tents beyond the dark walls of Fort Napier. Now, this little spot represents the only shelter and safety in all the country-side in case of a “difficulty” with our swarming dusky neighbors. Here and there in other townships there are “laagers,” or loopholed enclosures, within which wagons can be dragged and a stand made against a sudden Kafir raid; but here, at the seat of government, there is a battalion of an English regiment, a thousand strong, and a regular, orthodox fortified place, with some heavy pieces of ordnance. But you know of old how terribly candid I am, so I must confess at once that it was not with the smallest idea of ascertaining for myself the military strength and capability of Fort Napier that I paid it a visit that fine spring morning. No: my object was of the purest domestic character, and indeed was only to see with my own eyes what these new Kafir huts were like, with a view to borrowing the idea for a spare room here. Could anything be more peaceful than such a project? I felt like the old wife in Jean Ingelow’s Brides of Enderby as I drove slowly up the steep hill, at the brow of which I could already see the pacing sentries and the grim cannon-mouth—

I might have answered as she did,

for, although there are skirmishes beyond our borders, we ourselves, thank God! dwell in peace and safety within them. Nothing could be more picturesque than the gleaming white points now standing sharply out in snowy vandykes against a cobalt sky, or else toned harmoniously down against a soft gray cloud; now glistening on a background of green hillside, or nestling dimly in a dusty hollow. There is only barrack-room for half the regiment, and the other half, under canvas, takes a good many tents and covers a good deal of ground. Although the soldiers have got through the winter very well, it would not be prudent to trust them to the shelter of a tent during the coming summer months of alternate flood and sunshine. So Kafirs have been busy building nearly a hundred of their huts on an improved plan all this dry weather, and these little dwellings are now just ready for their complement of five men apiece. They are a great step in advance of the original Kafir hut, and it was for this reason I came to see them, lured also by hearing that they only cost four pounds apiece. We are so terribly cramped for room here. I have only ventured on one tiny addition—a dressing-room about as big as the cabin of a ship, which cost nearly eighty pounds to build of stone like the rest of the house. So I have had it on my mind for some time that it would be a very fine thing to build one of these glorified Kafir huts close to the house for a spare room. The real Kafir hut is exactly like a beehive, without door or window, and only a small hole to creep in and out at. These new military huts have circular walls, five feet high and about a dozen feet in diameter, made of closely-woven wattles, and covered within and without with clay. I stood watching the Kafirs working at one for some time. It certainly looked a rude and simple process. Some four or five stalwart Kafirs were squatting on the ground hard by, “snuffing” and conversing with much gesticulation and merriment. They were the off-gang, I imagine. Three or four more were tranquilly and in a leisurely fashion trampling the wet clay and daubing it on with their hands inside and out. They had not the ghost of a tool of any sort, and yet the result was wonderfully good. I wondered why finely-chopped grass was not mixed with the clay, as I have seen the New Zealand shepherds do in preparing the “cob” for their mud walls; but I was told that the Kafir would greatly object to anything so uncomfortable for his bare legs and feet. Of course, the shepherd works up the ugly mass with a spade, whilst here these men slowly trample it to the right consistency. The plastering is really a triumph of (literally) handiwork, though the process is exasperatingly slow. At first the mud comes out all over thumb-marks, and dries so, but in a day or two buckets of water are dashed over it, so as to remoisten it, and then it is once more patiently smoothed all over with the palm of the hand until an absolutely smooth surface is obtained, as flat and flawless as though the best of trowels had been used. A neatly-fitting door and window have meantime been made in the regimental workshop, and hung in the spaces left for them in the wattled walls. More wattles, closely woven together, are put on in the shape of a very irregular dome, and this is thatched nearly a foot deep with long rank grass tied securely down by endless ropes of finely-plaited grass. The result is a spacious, cool, and most comfortable circular room, and those which are finished and fitted up with shelves and camp furniture look as nice as possible. A little tuft of straw at the apex of each dome is at once a lightning-conductor and a finish to the quaint little building. The plastered walls of some huts are whitewashed, but the most popular idea seems to be to tar them and make them still more weather-proof. A crooked stick or two, being merely the rough branch of a tree, stands in the centre and acts as a musket-rack and tent-pole to the little dwelling. The Kafirs get only one pound ten shillings for each hut, and the wooden fittings are calculated to cost about two pounds ten shillings more; but I hear that they grumble a good deal on account of the distance from which they have to bring the grass, all in the neighborhood having been burnt. They also regard it as women’s work, for all the kraals are built by women.

On the whole, I am more than ever taken with the idea of a Kafir spare room, and quite hope to carry it out some day, the huts look so cool and healthy and clean. The thatch and mud walls will keep off the sun in the hot weather before us; and as all the huts stand on a gentle slope, there is no fear of their being damp. It is wonderful how well the soldiers have managed hitherto under canvas, and how healthy they have been; but I can quite understand that it is not well to presume upon such good luck during another wet season. As we were up in camp, we looked at all the soldiers’ arrangements—the canteen, where mustard and pickles seemed to be the most popular articles of food; the schoolhouse, a wee brick building, in which both the children and the recruits have to learn, and which is also used as a chapel on Sunday. Everything was the pink of neatness and cleanliness, as is always the case where soldiers or sailors live, and I was much struck by the absolute silence and repose of so small an enclosure with a thousand men inside it. I wondered whether a thousand women could have kept so quiet? Of course I peeped into the kitchen, and instantly coveted the beautiful brick oven out of which sundry smoking platters were being drawn. But curry and rice was the chief dish in the bill of fare for that day, and I can only say the smell was excellent and exceedingly appetizing. The view all round, too, was charming. Just at our feet lay the hollow where the men’s gardens are. Such potatoes and pumpkins! such cabbages and onions! The men delight in cultivating the willing soil in which all vegetables grow so luxuriantly and easily; and it is so managed that it shall be a profit as well as a pleasure to them. In many ways this encouragement of a taste for gardening is good: there is the first consideration of the advantage to themselves, and it is indirectly a boon to us, for if a thousand men were added to the consumers of the few potatoes and vegetables which daily find their way into the Maritzburg market, I know not what would become of us. Our last stroll was to the brow of another down close by, also crowned with white tents. Beneath it lay the military graveyard, and I have seldom seen anything more poetic and touching than the effect of this lovely garden—for so it looked, a spot of purest green, tenderly cared for—amid the bare winter coloring of all the country-side. The hills folded it softly, as if it were a precious place, the sun lay brightly on it, and the quiet sleeping-ground was made orderly and tranquil by many a sheltering tree and blooming shrub. I promised myself to come in summer and look down on it again when all the wealth of roses and geraniums are out, and when these brown hillsides are green and glorious with their tropic pasture.

You will think I have indeed taken a sudden mania for soldiers and camps when I tell you that a very few days after my visit to Fort Napier I joyfully accepted the offer of a friend to take me to see the annual joint encampment of the Natal Carbineers and D’Urban Mounted Rifles out on Botha’s Flat, rather more than halfway between this and D’Urban. Not only was I delighted at the chance of seeing that lovely bit of country more at my leisure than dashing through it in the post-cart, but I have always so much admired the pluck and spirit of this handful of volunteers, who keep up the discipline and prestige of their little corps in the teeth of all sorts of difficulties and discouragements, that I was glad to avail myself of the opportunity of paying them a visit when they were out in camp. For many years past these smart light-horse have struggled on in spite of obstacles to attending drill, want of money, lack of public attention and interest, and a thousand other lets and hinderances. Living as we do in such a chronically precarious position—a position in which five minutes’ official ill-temper or ever so trifling an injudicious action might set the whole Kafir population in a blaze of discontent, and even revolt—too much importance cannot, in my poor judgment, be attached to the volunteer movement; and it seems to me worthy in the highest degree of every encouragement and token of appreciation which it is in our power to give. Of either pence or praise these Natal mounted volunteers (for they would be very little use on foot over such an extent of railway-less country) have hitherto had a very small share, and yet I found the pretty little camp as full of military enthusiasm, as orderly, as severely simple in its internal economy, as though the eyes of all Europe were upon it. Each man there in sacrificing a week of his time was giving up a good deal more than most volunteers give up, and it would make too long a story if I were to enter into particulars of the actual pecuniary loss which in this country attends the lawyer leaving his office, the clerk his desk, the merchant his counting-house, and each providing himself with horses, etc. to come out here twice a year and drill pretty nearly from morning till night. The real difficulty, I fancy, lies in subordinates being able to obtain leave. Every sugar-estate, every office, every warehouse, has so few white men employed in it, exists in such a chronic state of short-handedness, that it is the greatest inconvenience to the masters to let their clerks go out. Both corps are therefore stronger on paper than in the field, but from no lack of willingness to serve on the part of the volunteers themselves.

I don’t want to be spiteful or invidious, but I have seen volunteer camps nearer the heart of civilization, where there were flower-gardens round the tents and lovely “fixings” inside, portable couches and chairs, albums, and clocks, besides a French cook and iced champagne flowing like a river. Dismiss from your mind all ideas of that sort if you come with me next year to Botha’s Flat. I can promise you scrupulous and exquisite neatness and cleanliness, but in every other respect you might as well be in a real camp on active service. Even the Kafir servants are left behind, the men—some of them very fine gentlemen indeed—cleaning their own horses and accoutrements, pitching their own tents, cooking their own food, and in fact acting precisely as though they had really taken the field in an enemy’s country. The actual drill, therefore—though more than half the hours of daylight are spent in the saddle under the instruction of one of the most enthusiastic and competent drill-instructors you could find anywhere—is by no means all that is practiced in these brief, hardly-won camp-days. The men learn to rely solely on their own resources. Their commissariat is arranged by themselves, one single small wagon to each corps conveying tents, forage, stores, firewood—all that is needed for man and horse—for ten days or so. They have no “base of operations”—nothing and nobody to depend upon but themselves. It is literally a “flying camp,” and all the more interesting for being so evidently what we shall most need in case of any native difficulty. I don’t suppose they ever dream of visitors, for in this languid land few people would journey thirty miles to look at anything, especially in a hot wind. Nor am I sure the volunteers want visitors. It is real, earnest, practical hard work with them, done with their utmost diligence, and without expecting the smallest reward, even in fair words. It strikes me as very remarkable and characteristic of the lack of general interest in public subjects how little one hears of the very men on whom we may at any moment be only too glad to rely. However, I never can attempt to fathom causes: rather let me describe effects for you as best I may.

And a very pretty effect the camp has as we dash round the shoulder of a steep hill with the brake hard down, the leaders plunging wildly along with slack traces, and a general appearance of an impending upset over everything. It has been a lovely drive, though rather hot, but the roads are ever so much better than they were in the summer, and I have never seen the country looking more beautiful, as it seems to grow greener with every mile out of Maritzburg. When the hills open out suddenly and show the great fertile cleft of undulating downs, green ravines with trickling silver threads down them, and purple mountains in the distance stretching away to the coast, which is known as the Inanda Location, one feels as if one were looking at the Happy Valley.

for neither the imaginary kingdom of Amhara nor any other kingdom in all the fair earth can show a more poetical or suggestive glimpse of scenic beauty. Yet when a few miles more of rushing and galloping through the soft air brings us to the top of the pass of the Inchanga, I make up my mind that that is the most beautiful stretch of country my eyes have ever beheld. It is too grand to describe, too complete to break up into fragments by words. Far down among the sylvan slopes of the park-like foreground the Umgeni winds, with the sunshine glinting here and there on its waters: beyond are bold, level mountains with rich deep indigo shadows and lofty crests cut off straight against the dappled sky, according to the South African formation. But we soon climb the lofty saddle, and put the brake hard down again for the worst descent on the road. If good driving and skill and care can save us, we need not be nervous, for we have all these; but the state of the harness fills me with apprehension, and it is little short of a miracle why it does not all give way at once and tumble off the horses’ backs. Luckily, there is very little of it to begin with, and the original leather is largely supplemented by reins or strips of dried bullock hide, so we hold together until the vehicle draws up at the door of a neat little wayside inn, where we get out and begin at once to rub our elbows tenderly, for they are all black and blue. There is the camp, however, on yonder green down, and here are two of the officers from it waiting for us, and wanting to know all about hours and plans and so forth. A little rest and luncheon are first on the programme, and a good deal of soap and water also for us travelers, and then, the afternoon being still young, we mount our horses and canter up the rising ground to where the flagstaff stands. The men are just falling in for their third and last drill, which will last till sundown, so there is time to go round the pretty little spot and admire the precision and neatness, the serviceable, business-like air, of everything. There is the path the sentries tread, already worn perfectly bare, but straight as though it had been ruled: yonder is the bit of sod-fencing thrown up as a shelter to the kettles and frying-pans. The kitchen range consists of half a dozen forked sticks to leeward of this rude shelter, and each troop contributes a volunteer cook and commissariat officer. The picket-ropes for the horses run down the centre of the little camp, and we must look at the neat pile of blankets and nose-bags marked with separate initials. The officers’ tents are at one end, and the guard tents at the other, and those for the privates, holding five men each, are between. It is all as sweet and clean and neat as possible, and one can easily understand what is stated almost as a joke—that the first night in camp no one could sleep for his own and his neighbor’s cough, and now there is not such a sound to be heard.

We are coming back into camp presently, for I am invited to dine at the officers’ mess to-night, so we must make the most of the daylight. It is a gray evening, and the hot wind has died away, allowing the freshness from the hills to steal down to this green spur, which is yet high enough to be out of the cold mists of the valley. The drill is not very amusing for a lady this afternoon, because it is real hard work—patiently doing the same thing over and over again until each little point is perfect—until the horses are steady and the men move with the ease and precision of a machine. But it is just because there is little else to distract one’s attention that I can notice what fine stalwart young fellows they all are, and how thoroughly in earnest. Their uniforms and accoutrements are simple, but natty, and clean as a new pin, the horses especially being ever so much better groomed and turned out by their masters’ hands than if each had been saddled by his usual Kafir groom. So, after a short while of watching the little squadron patiently wheel and trot and advance by those mysterious “fours,” manoeuvre across a swamp, charge down a hill, skirmish up that burnt slope over there, and so forth, we leave them hard at work, and canter over some ridges to see what lies beyond. But there is nothing much to reward us, and the only effect of our long evening ride is to make us all ravenously hungry and anxious for six o’clock and dinner. Long before that hour the dusk has crept down, and by the time we have returned, and I have exchanged my riding-habit for a splendid dinner-costume of ticking, it is cold enough and dark enough to make us glad of all the extra wraps we can find, and of the light and shelter of the snug little tent. Here, again, it is real camp fare. I am given the great luxury of the encampment—to sit upon a delicious karosse, or rug of dressed goat skins. It is snowy white, and soft and flexible as a glove on the wrong side, and on the right it is covered with long, wavy cream-colored hair with black patches at each corner. The ground is strewn with grass, dry and sweet as hay, and carriage candles are tied by wire to a cross stick fastened on a tent-pole: the tablecloth is a piece of canvas, the dishes are billies, but the food is excellent, and, above all, we have tea as the sole beverage for everybody. We are all provided with the best of sauces, and I assure you we very soon find ourselves at our dessert of oranges in a basket-lid. Never have any of us enjoyed a meal more, and certainly everybody except myself has earned it. Then there is a little tinkling and tuning up outside, and the band turns out to play to us. By this time the wind has got up again from another point, and is so bitterly bleak and cold that the musicians cannot possibly stand still, but have to keep marching round and round the little tent, playing away lustily and singing with a good courage. Every now and then a stumble over a tent-peg jerks out a laugh instead of a note, but still there is plenty of “go” and verve in the music, and half the camp turns out to join in the chorus of “Sherman’s March through Georgia.” We all declare loudly that we are going to carry “the flag that makes us free” through all sorts of places, especially from “Atlanta to the sea,” and I am quite sure that Sherman’s own “dashing Yankee boys” could not possibly have made more noise themselves. This is followed by the softest and sweetest of sentimental songs, given in a beautiful falsetto which would be a treasure to a chorister; but it is really too cold for sentiment, so we have one more song, and then the band sings “Auld Lang Syne” with great spirit, and as the wind is now rising to a hurricane, the musical performances are wound up somewhat hurriedly by “God Save the Queen!” For this the whole camp turns out of their own accord. The cooks leave their fires, the fatigue-party their scrubbing and the lazy ones their pipes. Under the clear starlight, with the Southern Cross sloping up from the edge of yonder dusky hill, with the keen wind sweeping round the camp of this little handful of Englishmen in a strange and distant country, the words of the most beautiful tune in the world come ringing as though straight from each man’s heart. Of course we all come out of our tent to stand bareheaded too, and I assure you it is a very impressive and beautiful moment. One feels as one stands here amid the flower of the young colonists, each man holding his cap aloft in his strong right hand, each man putting all the fervor and passion of his loyal love and reverence for his queen into every tone of his voice, that it is well worth coming down for this one moment alone. It is very delightful to see the English people, whether in units or tens of thousands, greet their sovereign face to face, but there is something even more heart-stirring, more inexpressibly pathetic, in such outbursts as this, evoked by none of the glamour and glitter of a royal pageant, but called into being merely by a name, a tune, a sentiment. I often think if I were a queen I should be more really gratified and touched by the ardent and loyal love of such handfuls of my subjects in out-of-the-way corners of my empire, where the sentiment has nothing from outside to fan it, than with the acclamations of a shouting multitude as my splendor is passing them by. At all events, I have never seen soldiers or sailors, regulars or volunteers, more enthusiastic over our own anthem. It is followed by cheer upon cheer, blessing upon blessing on the beloved and royal name, until everybody is perfectly hoarse from shouting in such a high wind, and we all retreat into the tiny tents for a cup of coffee and—what do you think? Stories. I am worse than any child in my love of stories, and we have one or two really good raconteurs in the little knot of hosts.

Of course one of the first inquiries I make is whether any snakes have been found in the tents, and I hear, much to my disappointment—because the bare fact will not at all lend itself to a story for G—— when I get home—that only one little one had crept beneath a folded great-coat (which is the camp pillow, it seems), and been found in the morning curled up, torpidly dozing in the woolen warmth. No, it is not a story G—— will ever care about, for the poor little snake had not even been killed: it was too small and too insignificant, they say, and it merely got kicked out of its comfortable bed. To console me for this bald and incomplete adventure, I am told some more snake-stories, which, at all events, ought to have been true, so good are they. Here are two for you, one of which especially delights me.

Hard by this very camp a keen sportsman was lately pursuing a buck. He had no dogs except a pet Skye terrier to help him in the chase—nothing but his rifle and a trusty Kafir. Yet the hard-pressed buck had to dash into a small, solitary patch of thorny scrub for shelter and a moment’s rest. In an instant the hunter was off his pony, and had sent the Kafir into the bush to drive out the buck, that he might have a shot at it the moment it emerged from the cover. Instead of the expected buck, however—I must tell you the story never states what became of him—came loud cries in Kafir from the scrub of, “Oh, my mother! oh, my friends and relations! I die! I die!” The master, much astonished, peeped as well as he could into the little patch of tangled briers and bushes, and there he saw his crouching Kafir stooping, motionless, beneath a low branch round which was coiled a large and venomous snake. The creature had struck at the man’s head as he crept beneath, and its forked tongue had got firmly imbedded in the Kafir’s woolly pate. The wretched beater dared not stir an inch: he dared not even put up his hands to free himself; but there he remained motionless and despairing, uttering these loud shrieks. His master bade him stay perfectly still, and taking close aim at the snake’s body, fired and blew it in two. He then with a dexterous jerk disentangled the barbed tongue, and flung the quivering head and neck outside the bushes. Here comes the only marvelous part of the story. “How did he know it was a poisonous snake?” I ask. “Oh, well: the little dog ran up to play with the head, and the snake—or rather the half snake—struck out at it and bit it in the paw, and it died in ten minutes.”

But the following is my favorite Munchausen: There was once a certain valiant man of many adventures whose Kafir title was “the prince of—fibs,” and he used to relate the following experience: One day—so long ago that breech-loading guns were unknown, and the process of reloading was a five-minute affair—he came upon a large and deadly snake making as fast as it could for its hole hard by. Of course, such a thing as escape could not be permitted, and as there was no other weapon at hand, the huntsman determined to shoot the huge reptile. But first the gun must be loaded, and whilst this was being done, lo! the snake’s head had already disappeared in the hole: in another instant the whole body would have followed. A sudden grasp at the tail, a rapid, bold jerk, flung the creature a yard or two off. Did it attempt to show fight? Oh no: it glided swiftly as ever toward the same shelter from which it had been so rudely plucked. The ramrod was rapidly plied, the charge driven home, but there was yet the percussion-cap to be adjusted. Once more the tail was grasped, the snake pulled out and flung still farther away. Again did the wily creature approach the hole. In another instant the cap would be on and the gun cocked, but everything depended on that instant. The sportsman kept his eye fixed on his artful foe even whilst his fingers deftly found and fixed the percussion-cap. What, then, was his horror and dismay to find that he had, for once, met his match, and that the snake, recognizing the desperate nature of the position, and keeping a wary eye on the hunter’s movements, instead of going into his hole for the third time in the usual method, had turned round and was backing in tail first! Is it not delightful?

As soon as we had finished laughing at this and similar stories it was high time to break up the little party, although it was only about the hour at which one sits down to dinner in London. Still, there were early parades and drills and goodness knows what, and I was very tired and sleepy with my jolting journey and afternoon on horseback. So we all went the “grand rounds,” lantern in hand, and with a deep feeling of admiration and pity for the poor sentries pacing up and down on the bleak hillside, walked down to the little inn, where a tiny room, exactly like a wooden box, had been secured for me, the rest of the party climbing heroically up the hill again to sleep on the ground with their saddles for a pillow. This was playing at soldiers with a vengeance, was it not? However, they all looked as smart and well as possible next morning, when they came to fetch me up to breakfast in the camp. Then more drill—very pretty this time—a sham attack and defence, and then another delightful long ride over a different range of hills. It was a perfect morning for exploring, gray and cool and cloudy—so different from the hot wind and scorching sun of yesterday. We could not go fast, not only from the steep up-and-down hill, but from the way the ground was turned up by the ant-bears. Every few yards was a deep burrow, often only a few hours’ old; and unless you had seen it with your own eyes I can never make you believe or understand the extraordinarily vivid color of this newly-turned earth. During yesterday’s journey I had noticed that the only wild-flower yet out was a curious lily growing on a fat bulb more than half out of the ground, and sometimes of a deep-orange or of a brilliant-scarlet color. With the recollection of these blossoms fresh in my mind, I noticed a patch of bright scarlet on the face of an opposite down, and thought it must, of course, be made by lilies. As I was very anxious to get some bulbs for my garden, I proposed that we should ride across the ravine and dig some up. “We can come if you like,” said the kindest and pleasantest of guides, “but I assure you it is only a freshly-dug ant-bear’s hole.” Never did I find belief so difficult, and, like all incredulous people, I was on the point of backing up my hasty opinion by half a dozen pairs of gloves when the same friendly guide laughingly pointed to a hole close by, bidding me look well at it before risking my gloves. There was nothing more to be said. The freshly scratched-out earth was exactly like vermilion, moist and brilliant in color—“a ferruginous soil,” some learned person said; but, however that may be, I had never before seen earth of such a bright color, for it was quite different from the red-clay soil one has seen here and in other places.

The line of country we followed that morning was extraordinarily pretty and characteristic. The distant purple hills rolled down to the gently-undulating ground over which we rode. Here and there—would that it had been oftener!—a pretty homestead with its sheltering trees and surrounding patches of pale-green forage clung to the steep hillside before us. Then, as we rode on, one of the ravines fell away at our feet to a deep gully, through which ran a streamlet among clustering scrub and bushes. In one spot the naked rock stood out straight and bare and bold for fifty yards or so, as though it were the walls of a citadel, with a wealth of creeping greenery at its foot, and over its face a tiny waterfall, racing from the hill behind, leapt down to join the brook in the gully. We saw plenty of game, too—partridges, buck, two varieties of the bald-headed ibis, secretary-birds, and, most esteemed of all, a couple of paauw (I wonder how it is spelt?), a fine kind of bustard, which is quite as good eating as a turkey, but daily becoming more and more scarce. There were lots of plover, too, busy among the feathery ashes on the newly-burned ground, and smaller birds chirruped sweetly every now and then. It was all exceedingly delightful, and I enjoyed it all the more for the absence of the blazing sunshine, which, however it may light up and glorify the landscape, beats too fiercely on one’s head to be pleasant. If only we women could bring ourselves to wear pith helmets, it would not be so bad; but with the present fashion of hats, which are neither shade nor shelter, a ride in the sun is pretty nearly certain to end in a bad headache. At all events, this ride had no worse consequence than making us very hungry for our last camp-meal, a solid luncheon, and then there was just time to rush down the hill and clamber into the post-cart for four hours of galloping and jolting through the cold spring evening air. My last look was at the white tents of the pretty camp, the smoke of its fires and the smart lines of carbineers and mounted rifles assembling to the bugle-call for another long afternoon of steady drill down in the valley, or “flat,” as it is called—a picturesque and pretty glimpse, recalling the memory of some very pleasant hours, the prettiest imaginable welcome, and a great deal of hearty and genuine hospitality.