Foreword 



have shown to the world a heroism so great is a 

 country worth writing about, and its people worthy 

 of study. 



The author of this book is a great-grandson of a 

 well-known scientific and literary writer in the first 

 half of the last century, Dr. Dionysius Lardner, but 

 he does not write at all in the doctor's style or on 

 the doctor's subjects. Joining the King's African 

 Rifles in Uganda early in 1909, he here tells of his 

 experiences during a year's stay in the country. 



He had previously seen active service during 

 the Boer War in South Africa, going out to the 

 Cape, a boy almost fresh from Harrow, at the 

 beginning of 1900. He learned his duties in the 

 field amid the stern lessons of actual warfare in the 

 operations in Cape Colony, south of the Orange 

 River, in Natal, and in the Transvaal, and was 

 awarded the Queen's medal with clasp for his 

 services. 



Ultimately laid low by enteric fever, he was left 

 during a long convalescence and recovery to brood 

 over many things both in his own experiences and 

 outside them. Becoming familiar with the vast 

 solitudes of South Africa, where the kopjes stand 

 like sentinels in the brown stretches of a wide 

 horizon, he seems to have acquired in some degree 

 the knowledge of that mystic feeling which the 

 immensity of the desolate veldt exercises over so 

 many. It is not unlikely that what is known as 

 the "call of the veldt," or some similar feeling, 

 induced him to leave the humdrum life of a garrison 



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