With Rimington | Page 2

and over their heads.
A few bestir themselves, roll, and stretch, and draw back the covering
from their sleepy, dusty faces. The first sunbeams begin to creep along
the ground and turn the cold sand yellow.
I am beginning this letter in the shade of a mimosa. The whole scene
reminds me very much of Egypt; and you might easily believe that you
were sitting on the banks of the Nile somewhere between the first and
second cataract. There are the same white, sandy banks, the same
narrow fringe of verdure on each side, the same bareness and
treelessness of the surrounding landscape, the same sun-scorched, stony
hillocks; in fact, the whole look of the place is almost identical. The
river, slow and muddy, is a smaller Nile; there only wants the long
snout and heavy, slug-like form of an old crocodile on the spit of sand
in the middle to make the likeness complete. And over all the big arch
of the pure sky is just the same too.
Our camp grows larger and rapidly accumulates, like water behind a
dam, as reinforcements muster for the attack. Methuen commands. We
must be about 8000 strong now, and are expecting almost hourly the
order to advance. Below us De Aar hums like a hive. From a deserted
little wayside junction, such as I knew it first, it has blossomed
suddenly into a huge depôt of all kinds of stores, provisions, fodder,

ammunition, and all sorts of material for an important campaign. Trains
keep steaming up with more supplies or trucks crowded with
khaki-clad soldiers, or guns, khaki painted too, and the huge artillery
horses that the Colonials admire so prodigiously. Life is at high
pressure. Men talk sharp and quick, and come to the point at once.
Foreheads are knit and lips set with attention. Every one you see walks
fast, or, if riding, canters. There is no noise or confusion, but all is
strenuous, rapid preparation.
Do you know Colonials? In my eight months of mining life at
Johannesburg I got to know them well. England has not got the type.
The Western States of America have it. They are men brought up free
of caste and free of class. When you come among Colonials, forget
your birth and breeding, your ancestral acres and big income, and all
those things which carry such weight in England. No forelocks are
pulled for them here; they count for nothing. Are you wide-awake,
sharp, and shrewd, plucky; can you lead? Then go up higher. Are you
less of these things? Then go down lower. But always among these
men it is a position simply of what you are in yourself. Man to man
they judge you there as you stand in your boots; nor is it very difficult,
officer or trooper, or whatever you are, to read in their blunt manners
what their judgment is. It is lucky for our corps that it has in its leader a
man after its own heart; a man who, though an Imperial officer, cares
very little for discipline or etiquette for their own sakes; who does not
automatically assert the authority of his office, but talks face to face
with his men, and asserts rather the authority of his own will and force
of character. They are much more ready to knock under to the man than
they would be to the mere officer. In his case they feel that the leader
by office and the leader by nature are united, and that is just what they
want.
There are Colonials out here, as one has already come to see, of two
tolerably distinct types. These you may roughly distinguish as the
money-making Colonials and the working Colonials. The
money-making lot flourish to some extent in Kimberley, but most of all
in Johannesburg. You are soon able to recognise his points and identify
him at a distance. He is a little too neatly dressed and his watch-chain is
a little too much of a certainty. His manner is excessively glib and
fluent, yet he has a trick of furtively glancing round while he talks, as if

fearful of being overheard. For the same reason he speaks in low tones.
He must often be discussing indifferent topics, but he always looks as if
he were hatching a swindle. There is also a curious look of waxworks
about his over-washed hands.
This is the type that you would probably notice most. The Stock
Exchange of Johannesburg is their hatching-place and hot-bed; but
from there they overflow freely among the seaside towns, and are
usually to be found in the big hotels and the places you would be most
likely to go to. Cape Town at the present moment is flooded with them.
But these are only the mere froth