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have his arm dressed. I took him into my carriage
and gave him meat & drink & dinner at Victoria West.
He was a delightful Irishman who insisted on showing me
his mother's portrait. He had got the Victoria Cross [X marked in pencil] for
riding down the firing line, saving a wounded man and
then with two bullets in him riding till his horse was
shot to warn his men about an ambush. He complained to me
that the only reason he did it was that he had violent
toothache at the time, and would have "ridden down the
owld Divvil himsilf."

About midday on Thursday we arrived at Orange
River at Norval's Pont and entered the Orange River Colony.
Grass began to appear, and the country became quite
flat and pastoral. We lunched at a horrible
dusty little place called Springfontein. The food was
very bad - meat as tough as indiarubber, everything tepid and
flies in clouds over the table. Soldiers began to come in at
wayside stations - officers going up to Bloemfontein, so
dusty and ragged that only their white teeth and clean nails
distinguished them from tramps. One delightful man called
[?Gaussin] of the Scots Guards, whom I knew in London,
turned up at Edenburg, going to Bloemfontein for new clothes.
We had a long crack about people I knew. We got
to Bloemfontein about 6, and he took me to dine at the
club. Afterwards I went to the theatre in the Town Hall and