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Rh the surface had not been churned up into endless dust by an army it might have been grassed.

Before the war, Modder River was a favourite 'watering place,' whither pic-nic parties and Sunday schools came from Kimberley. In springtime the banks were knee-deep in grass, they said, and aglow with beautiful wild-flowers. Now they were cut up by the numberless tracks of waggons and guns, littered with the impedimenta of a great host, scarred with the marks of recent battle. The pretty cottages of the village were torn and pock-marked by shell and bullet, and the drift itselfthe beautiful, lazy, tree-shaded drifta discoloured bog.

Out from the Modder station, on the road to Jacobs-daal, the long plains seemed more like the veldt one had read of than anything seen hitherto. Beyond Osfontein farmin the early year, just after the rainsit struck one as being almost the best country one had ever seen.

Miles, and miles, and miles of rolling downs stretched away right up to Bloemfontein. Long, waving, suc-culent grasses, as good as the best our plains produce. You rode through it with the sensation of riding through a field of ripening wheat. It seemed a pity, almost, that all these thousands of horses should trail through it, trampling it down, and wasting it need-lessly. So thick and luxuriant was it that it caught in your stirrup-irons, your scabbard 'swished' through it. When you lay down to sleep at night you were