WITH RIMINGTON




LETTER I

ORANGE RIVER CAMP


ORANGE RIVER, _November_ 18, 1899.

The sun is just rising on Orange River Camp. Our tents are pitched on
the slopes of white sand, soft and deep, into which you sink at every
step, that stretch down to the river, dotted with a few scraggy
thorn-trees. There are men round me, sleeping about on the sand, rolled
in their dark brown blankets, like corpses laid out, covered from head
to foot, with the tight folds drawn over their feet and over their
heads. A few bestir themselves, roll, and stretch, and draw back the
covering from their sleepy, dusty faces. The first sunbeams begin to
creep along the ground and turn the cold sand yellow.

I am beginning this letter in the shade of a mimosa. The whole scene
reminds me very much of Egypt; and you might easily believe that you
were sitting on the banks of the Nile somewhere between the first and
second cataract. There are the same white, sandy banks, the same narrow
fringe of verdure on each side, the same bareness and treelessness of
the surrounding landscape, the same sun-scorched, stony hillocks; in