_August 6._--_Bank Holiday._--At 6.45 we started as advance-guard again, and marched for five and a half hours, with only a halt or two of a few minutes, to Senekal. The country gradually became flatter, the kopjes fewer and lower, till at last it was a great stretch of arid, dusty plain. It seemed quite strange to be driving on level ground, after endless hills and precipitous drifts. We and Brabant's Horse were advance guard, and clattered down in a pall of blinding white dust into a substantial little tin-roofed town, many stores open, and people walking about in peace (the ladies all in black). Full of soldiers, of course, but still it was our first hint for months of peace and civilization, and seemed home-like. One of the first things I saw was a jar of Osborne biscuits in a window, and it gave me a strange thrill! The convoy and prisoners follow this evening. The column is miles long, as besides our own transport, there are all the Boer waggons, long red ones, each with some prisoners on it and a soldier. Also scores of Cape carts, with a fat farmer in each. There was a wild rush for provisions in the town by our orderlies and Brabant's. They got bread, and I bought some eggs and jam on commission. After camping and unharnessing, I had a good wash in the river, an orange-coloured puddle. I wonder how it is that by some fatality there is always a dead quadruped, mule, horse, or bullock, near our washing places. We don't mind them on the march; they are dotted along every road in South Africa now, I should think; but when making a refreshing toilette they jar painfully. Kipling somewhere describes a subtle and complex odour, which, he says, is the smell of the great Indian Empire. That of the great African Empire in this year of grace is the direct and simple one which I have indicated. In the evening we had a grand supper of fried eggs, jam, chupatties, and cocoa. This meal immediately followed tea. We made our fire in the best place for one, an ant-hill, about two feet high. The plan is to hack two holes, one in the top, another on the windward side, and to connect the two passages. There is then a fine draught, and you can cook both on the top and at the side. Inside, the substance of the hill itself gets red-hot and keeps a sustained heat.