discipline was visible in the commando on the march, and if the rifles and
bandoliers had not appeared so prominently it might readily have been
mistaken for a party of Nachtmaal celebrants on the way to Pretoria. Now
and then some youths emerged from the crowd and indulged in an impromptu
horse-race, only to return and receive a chiding from their elders for
wasting their horses' strength unnecessarily. Occasionally the keen eyes
of a rider spied a buck in the distance, and then several of the
lion-hunters sped obliquely off the track and replenished the commando
larder with much smaller game than was the object of their expedition.

If the commando came from a district far from the frontier, it proceeded
to the railway station nearest to the central meeting-place, and then
embarked for the front. No extraordinary preparations were necessary for
the embarking of a large commando, nor was much time lost before the
hunters were speeding towards their destination. Every man placed his own
horse in a cattle-car, his saddle, bridle, and haversack in the
passenger-coach, and then assisted in hoisting the cumbersome ox-waggons
on flat-top trucks. There were no specially deputised men to entrain the
horses, others to load the waggons, and still others to be subtracted from
the fighting strength of the nation by attending to such detail duties as
require the services of hundreds of men in other armies.

After the burghers were entrained and the long commando train was set in
motion the most fatiguing part of the campaign was before them. To ride on
a South African railway is a disagreeable duty in times of peace, but in
war-times, when trains were long and overcrowded, and the rate of progress
never higher than fifteen miles an hour, then all other campaigning duties
were pleasurable enjoyments. The majority of burghers, unaccustomed to
journeying in railway trains, relished the innovation and managed to make
merry even though six of them, together with all their saddles and