To
eastward the endless grassy sea went whitening to the horizon, crossed
in the distance with the horizontal lines of rich brown and yellow and
pure blue, which at sunrise and sunset give such marvellous colouring to
the veldt. The air here is exactly like the desert air, very
exhilarating to breathe and giving to everything it touches that
wonderful clearness and refinement which people who have been brought up
in a damp climate and among smudged outlines so often mistake for
hardness. Our great ammunition fire in the hollow of the hill burned
merrily, and by-and-by a furious splutter of Mauser cartridges began,
with every now and then the louder report of shells and great smoke
balls hanging in the air. But sheer above all, above yellow veldt and
ruined Boer laager, rose the hill, the position we had carried, grim and
rigid against the sunset and all black. And, with the sudden sense of
_seeing_ that comes to one now and then, I stared at it for a while and
said out loud "Belmont!" And in that aspect it remains photographed in
my memory.
LETTER III
GRASPAN
_November_ 26, 1899.
We marched out from our Orange River Camp on November 22nd, and fought
at Belmont on the 23rd. On the 24th we marched north again, and on the
25th (yesterday) fought another action at Graspan, or, as some call it,
Enslin--there is still the difficulty about names.
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