Ours was quite new. There was no furniture in it; but this, as we
had been so long without it, we did not miss. But everything we really
needed--gorgeous wall-papers, and dados, and polished floors, and
electric-bells, and stained-glass windows--was there. We had hot baths
at the Grand Hotel, and we dined at the club, and we forgot all about
the war, and the veldt, and the dust, and the long marches, and the Boer
lurking in ambush, and the whispering bullet from the hill. This went on
for two days, and then we marched again, and we have been marching ever
since.
We left Pretoria on June 19th, and, taking it easy, reached Bethlehem on
July 9th, doing a bit under 200 miles in the twenty days. The meaning of
the new scheme begins to dawn on us. Clements and Paget have come up
from the west; Rundle is down south-west, near Ficksburg; the Basuto
border runs up from there south and south-east, and within the ground
thus enclosed we have penned a very considerable force of the enemy,
among whom is that Jack-in-the-box, Christian De Wet. We know they are
there, and indeed we have little fights with their scouts every day. The
question is, how are we to collar them? The country is very broken and
hilly and very extensive.
Hunter is looking after us now. Poor Ian Hamilton, as you will know, had
an accident at Heidelberg. His horse put a foot in an antbear's hole,
just in front of me as it happened, and came down, flinging the general
forward over his head.
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