The amount of hair about their
face, too, and their indifference to washing, does not improve their
appearance. However, in the boy stage, and before the dulness of their
surrounding has had time to tell, they are quite different, frank-faced
and manly, with clear skin, tall and well grown, like young larches. It
does seem strange that such mere children should be in the field against
us. What would you think of giving Puckie a rifle and sending him out to
fight? Boer prisoners have told me that the courage of these boys could
be relied on; they were often braver, and would stick to a position they
had been placed in longer than the men. They showed traces of the
experience they had been through, though. Not only in being deeply
tanned and more or less ragged and thin, but by an unmistakable
expression (in many instances) in their faces and in their eyes; a
dilated look, as of one who sees something appalling before him, and
braces himself to face it out. Considering what it is to be exposed to
lyddite and shrapnel fire (the absolute hell of din and concussion
besides rain of bullets), one doesn't wonder that it leaves marks on
young faces.
R. and I rode eastward through the hills in the Golden Gate direction,
meeting parties of Boers, waggons, Cape-carts, &c., coming straggling
in. It reminded me of the road to Epsom on a Derby morning.
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