With Rimington | Page 3

of the South African Colonial breed.
The real mass and body of them consists (besides tradesmen, &c., of
towns) of the miners of the Rand, and, more intrinsically still, of the
working men and the farmers of English breed all over the Colony. It is
from these that the fighting men in this quarrel are drawn. It is from
these that our corps, for instance, has been by the Major individually
and carefully recruited; and I don't think you could wish for better
material, or that a body of keener, more loyal, and more efficient men
could easily be brought together.
Many of them are veterans, and have taken part in some of the
numerous African campaigns--Zulu, Basuto, Kaffir, Boer, or Matabele.
They are darkly sunburnt; lean and wiry in figure; tall often, but never
fat (you never see a fat Colonial), and they have the loose, careless seat
on horseback, as if they were perfectly at home there. As scouts they
have this advantage, that they not only know the country and the Dutch
and Kaffir languages, but that they are accustomed, in the rough and
varied colonial life, to looking after themselves and thinking for
themselves, and trusting no one else to do it for them. You can see this
self-reliance of theirs in their manner, in their gait and swagger and the
way they walk, in the easy lift and fall of the carbines on their hips, the
way they hold their heads and speak and look straight at you.
Your first march with such a band is an episode that impresses itself.
We were called up a few days ago at dead of night from De Aar to
relieve an outlying picket reported hard pressed. In great haste we
saddled by moonlight, and in a long line went winding away past the
artillery lines and the white, ghostly tents of the Yorkshires. The hills in
the still, sparkling moonlight looked as if chiselled out of iron, and the
veldt lay spread out all white and misty; but what one thought most of

was the presence of these dark-faced, slouch-hatted irregulars, sitting
free and easy in their saddles, with the light gleaming dully on revolver
and carbine barrel. A fine thing is your first ride with a troop of
fighting men.
Though called guides we are more properly scouts. Our strength is
about a hundred and fifty. A ledger is kept, in which, opposite each
man's name, is posted the part of the country familiar to him and
through which he is competent to act as guide. These men are often
detached, and most regiments seem to have one or two of ours with
them. Sometimes a party is detached altogether and acts with another
column, and there are always two or three with the staff. Besides acting
as guides they are interpreters, and handy men generally. All these little
subtractions reduce our main body to about a hundred, or a little less;
and this main body, under Rimington himself, acts as scouts and
ordinary fighting men. In fact, a true description of us would be "a
corps of scouts supplying guides to the army."
One word about the country and I have done. What strikes one about all
South African scenery, north and south, is the simplicity of it; so very
few forms are employed, and they are employed over and over again.
The constant recurrence of these few grave and simple features gives to
the country a singularly childish look. Egyptian art, with its mechanical
repetitions, unchanged and unvaried, has just the same character. Both
are intensely pre-Raphaelite.
South Africa's only idea of a hill, for instance, is the pyramid. There are
about three different kinds of pyramid, and these are reproduced again
and again, as if they were kept all ready made in a box like toys. There
is the simple kopje or cone, not to be distinguished at a little distance
from the constructed pyramids of Egypt, just as regular and perfect.
Then there is the truncated or flat-topped pyramid, used for making
ranges; and finally the hollow-sided one, a very pretty and graceful
variety, with curving sides drooping to the plain. These are all. Of
course there are a few mistakes. Some of the hills are rather shakily
turned out, and now and then a kopje has fallen away, as it were, in the
making. But still the central idea, the type they all try for, is always
perfectly clear. Moreover, they all are, or are meant to be, of exactly the
same height.
Most strange and weird is this extraordinary regularity. It seems to

mean something, to be arranged on some plan and for some humanly
intelligible purpose. In the evenings and early mornings especially,
when these oft-repeated shapes stand solemnly round the