This Christmas patrol of ours was of use in touching the southernmost
and westernmost limits of the Boer position. It has shown that the
enveloping movement of which so much has been said, and which has been
pressed now and then on the east side, has not made much progress on the
west.

The big mountain range, running east and west, comes to an end some
thirty miles west of Modder Camp, where it breaks up into a few detached
masses and peaks. The extreme one of these, a sugar-loaf cone, is called
the Pintberg, and on this lonely eerie a picket of ours is generally
placed; crouched among the few crags and long grass tufts that form its
point, the horses tethered in the hollow behind; listening by night and
watching by day. When we come out thus far, we sometimes stay out a week
or more at a time. The enemy's position is along the hills north of the
plain by the river--chiefly north of it, but in places south.

I am turning over my diary with the idea of giving you a notion of the
sort of life we lead, but find nothing remarkable.

"Last night, Vice, Dunkley, and I were on lookout on the kopje. There
had been a heavy storm in the afternoon and another broke as we reached
the hill. We crouched in our cloaks waiting for it to pass before
climbing up, as the ironstone boulders are supposed to attract the
lightning (I have heard it strike them; it makes a crack like a
pistol-shot, and Colonials don't like staying on the hill tops during a
storm). We passed all night on our airy perch among the rocks, half wet
and the wind blowing strong. It was a darkish and cloudy night, rather
cold. Watched the light die out of the stormy sky; the lightning
flickering away to leeward; wet gleams from the plain where the water