travel about five miles, the oxen two and a half miles an hour in a day of ten hours,— roughly, fifty and twenty-five miles a day. Mules require better feeding, and while feeding can be tethered near the waggons; oxen feed anywhere, but stray long distances after food and water, and so always require mounted guards: they return at night, each span to its own waggon; experienced drivers are plentiful in the country. The waggons form an excellent laager if attacked, and men can sleep underneath them if tents are not carried.

Mules are stubborn, often difficult to manage, and given to stampede; oxen won't stampede, and do their work mechanically if under native drivers. An ox-waggon carrying 4 tons occupies fifty yards road space; a mule-waggon carrying 2 tons occupies twenty-five yards, so the length of a column is the same. Both require two men to drive. Nothing will force an ox to vary his natural pace, and his habits must not be interfered with. If you are in a hurry and it is near the time to outspan, you must do as he wishes: he must be humoured or he will give in, so he is not fitted for movement in the neighbourhood of an enemy; but he stands alone as the transport animal of South Africa.

South Africa has been called the grave of reputations, and why? because men have not studied the customs of the country. The Horse Guards started off its generals with a light heart. Transport?

There are railways; you can look them up in the Drill Book, which tells you how many men with valises on their backs

you can stow in a third-class carriage, how to entrain them, to lock the carriage-doors at the stations: there are pages in books of red binding telling you how to do it-yes, except in Africa!

It's going to be a big affair: we know how to do it; send an Army Corps, that's the thing We

yes, except in Africa. shall want cavalry; our Hussars and Lancers are the finest mounted men in the world: the very thing-yes, except in Africa. But, says the Admiralty, there are no ships to be got fit for the transport of cavalry or artillery; we have taken all that can be hired, and the others will only carry infantry. Africa is a horseproducing country, where thousands of hardy little horses can be bought at about £13 a-head; they know the country, can thrive on the forage there, and can be ridden away as soon as the men to ride them jump ashore. Sending horses to Africa is sending coals to Newcastle. They are not up to the standard, no! The time will come when we shall enlist cavalry for cavalry work all over the world, and not for parade; officers and men who can ride anything and over anything, as they can now, mounted for use and not for display, and not handicapped, the first by the regulation £500 a-year beyond their pay, the men by well-shaped legs to show off their well-cut trousers.

Hardly had the Army Corps landed when the ponderous creature was broken up: generals saw divisions shouting for their brigades, gunners calling to the blue - jackets for guns, and units nowhere at all. It was all very wrong, for units are excellent things-except in Africa. Then the troops were entrained, only to detrain in front of the Boers, who had got there before them and locked them up for a month or two, till South Africa sent her oxwaggons to get them out.

Those fine English horses left England in mid-winter and had to fight at the Cape in midsummer; no wonder they could not catch the Boers, and had to be replaced by colonial lads on ponies not up to the standard-yes, except for Africa.

So the War Office have spent some millions and many soldiers' lives to learn what commonsense would have told it for nothing, that the dwellers in a country must know something about it, and can produce articles better fitted for use in it than those which "come from Sheffield."

In view of the tactics which our generals have employed, we have to admit they have been out - manoeuvred by the Boers everywhere except at Elandslaagte. But defensive tactics must fail unless leavened by the offensive, a maxim which assures us that success, which now appears to tremble in the balance, will not be with the Boers. With this exception their tactics have been admirable: they have shown themselves indomitable with spade and rifle; the skill

and labour which have moved guns of position are nearly incredible; and the courage with which they have held their ground is worthy of brave men. In a broad sense their tactics have been to utilise their superiority in numbers by strictly containing large forces, and their knowledge of the ground by occupying defensive positions across our line of advance, compelling a frontal attack, their own retreat being assured. They have traded on our want of mobility, and by skilful use of their own have enabled their tactics to win.

This superior agility, and inexperience of the country, has led the latter to disregard ordinary rules; but this is no excuse for the disgraceful mistakes which have been made. For these they can hardly be blamed: there are details which are relegated to the staff, and the burden of blame must rest with them. Insufficient scouting is at the root, no doubt extremely difficult, owing to our weakness in cavalry in a land where every Boer is a mounted scout, trained from boyhood to learn scouting as a serious business, using smokeless powder, riding a pony at home on karoo, veldt, or koppje. The Boers, again, have recognised the revolution modern firearms have caused in warfare, while we have been wedded to obsolete methods; they have held positions in such a way that our artillery has been unable to prepare the way for the assault; in their trenches they have constructed the most perfect head

cover, and the advanced trench of considerable depth, placed some distance in front, has proved a novel and disastrous obstacle. It is doubtful whether our boasted lyddite shells have caused the losses which we claim, or that we have ever destroyed a gun of position by the fire of our own, so admirably are they protected.

A terrible indictment against our sagacity lies in the number of men captured-at Nicholson's Nek more than 800. An officer present stated that when the ammunition and guns were lost it was decided to remain: if they retired it would interfere with Sir George White's general scheme. But a schoolboy will recognise that without guns and ammunition soldiers cease to be such, and their presence anywhere is a hindrance.

There has been a tendency of late years to exalt the staff at the expense of the regimental officer. Cases are noticed where a staff officer has been sent to “assist” a commanding officer at the head of his regiment. Seasoned commanding officers disregard this "assistance," but the younger officers which the present system produces are apt to look upon it as "by order." There was a staff officer present at the Nicholson's Nek disaster to "advise" Colonel Carleton, commanding his own and the Gloucester regiment, which made up the column,-a step calculated to interfere with the regimental system to which our army owes its roll of glory of the past. It has grown spontaneously out of that love of home which

is innate in every one in our Islands. Most of us have dined at a regimental mess, where, at the table, we have been welcomed by the officers hospitably and cordially; where the band has played their best in honour of the guest their officers have produced; where the men have gathered in groups outside to listen to their band, and we feel we are in a home circle-every one here is bound together by home ties. The regiment sails for South Africa and hurries up to where the fighting is; by the side of the colonel rides an officer to "assist" him, and the ranks say to one another, "Who's he? I don't know him. Well; I shall stick to old Blazes, though he did give me ninetysix hours last week." What are our soldiers out there fighting for? For British supremacy? for the overthrow of a corrupt Government? Not at all; the politicians will settle that. Every soldier is fighting for his home: the Englishman for the farm by the sunny Devonshire lanes, the Highlander for that cottage where the heather spreads a carpet for the north wind, and the Connaught lad for the cabin by the wayside in far-off Galway. The presence of a stranger in that company is like a pebble in a puddle, and makes a ripple.

At Stormberg we lost 600 men because they took a wrong turning was no staff officer told off to indicate the right and efface the wrong road? Boer tactics, immediately before an attack, lend themselves to in

fantry scouting: at Colenso we are told that they allowed single men to pass between their lines, so as to reserve their fire for the approaching column. At

this same action 195 men were reported missing-a fact which points to slackness on the part of officers and non-commissioned officers, for allowing men to stray after impossible cover, and then to remain there.

It

During the lull that followed the action at Colenso, General French had demonstrated how a general can wage war in South Africa if he is provided with suitable instruments. is a puzzle why this had not been done at the beginning. Cavalry are all-important, and horse artillery equally so. The war was in South Africa, and we sent an Army Corps; mules without carts, and guns with shrapnel only. Who did it? Who did it? Lord Wolseley had marched troops across the Transvaal to demolish Sekukuni's kraal; Evelyn Wood, his Adjutant - General, though he missed Majuba, was in ample time to make peace under its shadow; Buller, his righthand man, had taken troops to reoccupy Potchefstroom. There are pigeon-holes in his office crammed with reports by the officers who had fought the Boers in 1881; every one in office admitted that if poor Colley had had a cavalry regiment there would have been one mountain the less to describe in the geography-books of South Africa, so it could not have been the fault of the Horse Guards.

General French with a cavalry brigade, several batteries

of horse and field artillery, a considerable number of mounted men, and some infantry, had a force as mobile as that of the enemy, and could beat them at their own game, keep them constantly on the move, snap up their waggons, push aside their patrols, cut across their rear, and allow them no time to drink their afternoon coffee, tune up psalms, or practise any other cheap swagger of the "simple farmers." He did not depend for information on native policemen or "loyal Dutch," preferring to have it from his own scouts and his own observation. So with a mobile force at his disposal he was able to surprise the Boer position at Colesberg on the 2nd January, and by a clever turning movement to place himself between the Boers and their main laager, thus cutting their line of retreat across the Orange river. His infantry gained sufficient mobility to accompany the mounted men by riding in waggons, and, during the attack, as soon as a position was shelled out by the guns, they moved up and occupied it: so the entire range was retained by the tactics of common-sense in the employment of infantry.

About the same time General Methuen succeeded in clearing out the Boers who for some time had threatened his leftColonel Babington moving out from Modder river with a cavalry brigade towards the northwest, while Colonel Pilcher left Belmont, and, marching with a mixed force, principally of Colonial troops, on New Year's Day captured a Boer laager

and forty prisoners, again largely assisted by admirable common-sense tactics, the victory enabling him to occupy Douglas unopposed.

It is useful to remark how big events often result from the most ordinary precautions. Before Colonel Pilcher started he locked up every Kaffir in his kraal, and had their names called every hour, and so surprised the enemy and captured everything he had. Probably when surprises have been attempted before, no means were taken to prevent the inevitable Kaffir or "loyal Dutchman" from starting on ahead to carry the news to the men who were to be surprised.

A lesson, too, was taught us by our Colonial troopers near Dordrecht. The Cape Irregulars had been worrying the Boers all day; but when they retired for the night, forty troopers under Lieutenant Milford had been left behind. Early next morning a party of Cape Mounted Rifles went to their rescue. They found them hardly pressed by hundreds of Boers, and their ammunition was running short: they had fought all night; the Boers had shot all their horses, but declined to attack the "donga" in which they had taken cover. During the fight the white flag was tried, but the Colonials were not to be taken in they waited for the usual volley, and then returned it, so that Boer and his comrade will wave white flags no more. The lessons that our Colonial brothers taught us here are that you need not give your

self up a prisoner to the Boers as long as you have a cartridge in your pocket; and that the Boer's white flag is a coward's lie.

An officer who had considerable experience of white flags in 1881, when he took command, fell in his men and gave them his experience, adding, "There will be no white flags here." The men knew and understood him, and the Boers knew him, and no white flag came in till after three months, when the sergeant of the "lookout" on the roof of the hovel in which the officer lived put his head down, "There's a white flag coming, sir; shall I take him now, or wait till he comes nearer?

The term "donga occurs SO often that I will describe it. We have seen a duck-pond in a farmyard in summer which has dried up, the mud at the bottom netted over with cracks:

dongas" are these cracks, magnified. When we were new to South Africa a regiment

that had been some time there rode over to ask us to breakfast, and we set out to ride back with them: another officer and myself had some work to finish, and were to follow as soon as it was done, which we did. It was capital going, the veldt as flat as a billiard-table, and we followed our friends' lead, who were far on ahead. Of a sudden we both nearly came to grief in a yawning chasm that wriggled across the way as far as we could see, perhaps fifty feet deep, and double that width, the sides perpendicular. So we fired our