"I always think more of this anniversary than of that of my birth, and I could not picture a more enjoyable way of spending it.

I am here, out in the wilds, with three troopers....

We are nearly eighty miles from Buluwayo and thirty from the nearest troops.

I have rigged up a shelter from the sun with my blanket, a rock, and a thorn-bush; thirteen thousand flies are, unfortunately, staying with me, and are awfully attentive....

I am looking out on the yellow veldt and the blue sky; the veldt with its grey hazy clumps of thorn-bush is shimmering in the heat, and its vast expanse is only broken by the gleaming white sand of the river-bed and the green reeds and bushes which fringe its banks." How could a man feel unhappy with the whole of his wardrobe packed away in one wallet of the saddle, and his larder in the other?
Be sure that Lucullus never enjoyed a banquet with the same sharpness of delight as Baden-Powell squatting amid the yellow grass of the veldt with his cocoa and rice.
But there were anxious moments coming for the man who kept on the open veldt the twentieth anniversary of his joining Her Majesty's army with gladness in his heart.