personal luggage, were crowded into one compartment. The singing of hymns
occupied much of their time on the journey, and when they tired of this
they played practical jokes upon one another and amused themselves by
leaning out of the windows and jeering at the men who were guarding the
railway bridges and culverts. At the stations they grasped their
coffee-pots and rushed to the locomotive to secure hot water with which to
prepare their beverage. It seldom happened that any Boer going to the
front carried any liquor with him and, although the delays and vexations
of the journey were sufficiently irritating to serve as an excuse,
drunkenness practically never occurred. Genuine good-fellowship prevailed
among them, and no quarrelling was to be observed. It seemed as if every
one of them was striving to live the ideal life portrayed in the Testament
which they read assiduously scores of times every day. Whether a train was
delayed an hour at a siding or whether it stopped so suddenly that all
were thrown from their seats, there was no profane language, but usually
jesting and joking instead. Little discomforts which would cause an
ordinary American or European soldier to use volumes of profanity were
passed by without notice or comment by these psalm-singing Boers, and
inconveniences of greater moment, like the disarrangement of the
commissariat along the route, caused only slight remonstrances from them.
An angry man was as rarely seen as one who cursed, and more rare than
either was an intoxicated one.

Few of the men were given to boasting of the valour they would display in
warfare or of their abilities in marksmanship. They had no battle-cry of
revenge like "Remember the _Maine!_" or "Avenge Majuba!" except it was the
motto: "For God, Country, and Independence!" which many bore on the bands
of their hats and on the stocks of their rifles. Very occasionally one
boasted of the superiority of the Boer, and still more rarely would one be
heard to set three months as the limit required to conquer the British