There was a heavy gloom on the last days of my soldiering. It was at
Naauwpoort that I first joined the Guides. We stopped there coming down.
There was the waiting-room, the very table I had slept on; the sun-baked
flat where first I met the Major; the slopes where our tents were
pitched--Lord! how the sight of the place brings it all back, and how
different everything has turned out from what we expected; it was there
that I joined, and it was there, travelling down with our time-expired
men, that we first heard the news of the Queen's death. You at home will
feel this deeply--of course every one must--but I can't help thinking
that out here, far away from home and fighting, one feels it even more.
I am almost surprised at minding so much. There is an irksome sense at
the back of one's mind, even when one is thinking of other things--of
loss, of something wanting. England seems less England to me than it did
and I less of an Englishman. It gives a faint satisfaction to have been
one of her soldiers at the end.
I will spare you my raptures on reaching Cape Town and seeing the woods
and clear streams and sea again. The change from a comparatively barren
country to the richly-wooded slopes under Table Mountain, and the burst
of sparkling sea beyond is quite sudden. At one step, in the twinkling
of an eye, you pass from monotony and desolation and the old life of the
veldt into everything that is most lovely and suggestive of freedom and
variety.
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