Wolvehoek was the first stop.
Here blue-nosed soldiers descended from the railway-carriages in varied and weird costumes, making a rush with their billies[40] for hot water, wherewith to cook their morning coffee, cheerily laughing and cracking their jokes, while shivering natives in blankets and tattered overcoats waited hungrily about for a job or scraps of food.

After leaving Wolvehoek, we entered on Commandant De Wet's hunting-ground and the scene of his recent exploits.

There, at almost every culvert, at every ganger's house, were pickets of soldiers, all gathered round a crackling fire at that chill morning hour; and at every one of these posts freshly constructed works of sandbags and deep trenches were in evidence to denote that their sentry work was no play, but grim earnest.
We next crossed the Rhenoster Spruit, and passed the then famous Rhenoster position, so formidable even to the unskilled eye, and where my military friends told me the Boers would have given much trouble, had it not been for the two outspread wings of the Commander-in-Chief's army.

A little farther on, the deviation line and the railway-bridge were pointed out as one of the many triumphs of engineering skill to be seen and marvelled at on that recently restored line.

The achievements of these lion-hearted engineers could not fail to impress themselves even on a civilian.