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I came on here in a cart, as I felt ill from the return of the cold weather. While at Rathfelder we had a superb day, and the J-s drove me over to Constantia, which deserves all its reputation for beauty. What a divine spot! such kloofs, with silver rills running down them! It is useless to describe scenery. It was a sort of glorified Scotland, with sunshine, flowers, and orange-groves.

The black men owned little of the country: they hid in the kloofs and thickets in terror, while the European conquerors shed each other's blood for gold, and land, and power. The boulder was so very old. It could afford to wait patiently until these men, like all that went before, had passed.

Delarey was lurking in the difficult kloofs of the Western Transvaal; Botha was on watch in the high veld of the Eastern Transvaal, just outside the "protected area"; and De Wet was awaiting his opportunity in the N.E. of the Orange River Colony.

We know now that thousands of Free Staters were waiting in the kloofs between Mounted Infantry Hill and Middle Hill, not two miles distant, for the opportunity which, they had no doubt, would be opened up to them by the success of five or six hundred tough veterans who had volunteered to win that position or die in the attempt.

But the road itself, such as it was, lay all on the high plain, looking down now and again into gorges or kloofs, wooded on their slopes with scrubby trees, and comparatively well-watered.

The country was of such a nature that they were able to get quite near to us without coming under our fire, for small kloofs and other inequalities of the ground afforded them excellent cover. But when they did show themselves they were met by such a frightful and unceasing fire that they could not approach nearer than two hundred paces from our lines.

The kloofs in the hills were covered with dense bush, "idoro" bush as the natives call it, and in some places, with the "wacht-een-beche," or "wait-a-little thorn," and there were great quantities of the lovely "machabell" tree, laden with refreshing yellow fruit having enormous stones.

From February 20th the troops swept in an enormous skirmish line across the country, ascending hills, exploring kloofs, searching river banks, and always keeping the enemy in front of them. At last, when the pressure was severely felt, there came the usual breakback, which took the form of a most determined night attack upon the British line.

Stella said that the night which followed was more like a hideous nightmare than a reality. She was never able to tell me all that occurred in it. She had a vague recollection of being borne over rocks and along kloofs, while around her echoed the horrible grunts and clicks of the baboons.

Lo! of a sudden all that ocean turned to silver, a wide path of rippling silver stretched from it to them. It might have been the road of angels. The sweet soft light beat upon their ship, showing its tapering masts and every detail of the rigging. It passed on beyond them, and revealed the low, foam-fringed coast-line rising here and there, dotted with kloofs and their clinging bush.