CHAPTER I.
ON THE EDGE NEWCASTLE, NATAL, _Thursday, October 5, 1899_.
Late last Sunday night I found myself slowly crawling towards the front from Pretoria in a commandeered train crammed full of armed Boers and their horses.

I had rushed from the Cape to quiet little Bloemfontein, the centre of one of the best administered States in the world, where the heads of the nation in the intervals of discussing war proudly showed me their pianos, their little gardens, little libraries of English books, little museums of African beasts and Greek coins, and all their other evidences of advancing culture.

Then on to Pretoria, the same kind of a town on a larger and richer scale--trim bungalow houses, for the most part, spread out among gardens full of roses, honeysuckle, and syringa.

But at the station all day and night the scene was not idyllic.

Every hour train after train moved away--stores and firewood in front, horses next, and luggage vans for the men behind.