And Opposed To It Was This Merry Company Of Boer Farmers Lying On The Grass, Toasting Pieces Of Freshly Killed Ox On The End Of A Stick, Their Hobbled Ponies Foraging For Themselves A Half-Mile Away, A Thousand Men Without A Tent Among Them, Without A Field-Glass.

It was a picnic, a pastoral scene, not a scene of war.

On the hills overlooking the drift were the guns, but down along the banks the burghers were sitting in circles singing the evening hymns, many of them sung to the tunes familiar in the service of the Episcopal Church, so that it sounded like a Sunday evening in the country at home. At the drift other burghers were watering the oxen, bathing and washing in the cold river; around the camp-fires others were smoking luxuriously, with their saddles for pillows. The evening breeze brought the sweet smell of burning wood, a haze of smoke from many fires, the lazy hum of hundreds of voices rising in the open air, the neighing of many horses, and the swift soothing rush of the river.

When morning came to Cronje's farm it brought with it no warning nor sign of battle. We began to believe that the British army was an invention of the enemy's. So we cooked bacon and fed the doves, and smoked on the veranda, moving our chairs around it with the sun, and argued as to whether we should stay where we were or go on to the bridge.

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