Occasionally, for instance, a few troopers were unhorsed during
parade and the riderless steeds trotted along the public road at
Rosebank. But certainly the tests of horsemanship were severe. Many of
the horses supplied by Government were very wild and sometimes behaved
like professional buckjumpers; and it is no easy task to control the
eccentric and unexpected gyrations of such a beast when the rider is
encumbered with the management of a heavy Lee-Metford rifle. Since the
day on which I first saw the squadron in question it has passed through
its baptism of fire at Colenso. The Light Horse advanced on the right of
Colonel Long's ill-fated batteries, and was cruelly cut up by a
murderous fire from Hlangwane Hill.
Capetown is not well furnished with places of amusement. There is, it is
true, a roomy theatre, whose manager, Mr. de Jong, sent an invitation
to the staff of the "Pink 'Un" to dine with him and his friends at
Pretoria on New Year's Day! How the Boers must have laughed when they
read of this cordial invitation! During the few days which elapsed
before our ambulance train started for the front we paid a visit to the
theatre, but we found the stage tenanted by a "Lilliputian Company," and
it is always tiresome and distressing to watch precocious children of
twelve aping their elders. One feels all the time that the whole
performance scarcely rises above an exhibition of highly-trained cats or
monkeys, and that the poor mites ought all to be in bed long ago.
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