From the author's introduction: "The stir and tumult of a camp do not favor calm or sustained thought, and whatever is written herein must be regarded simply as the immediate effect produced by men powerfully moved, and scenes swiftly changing upon what I hope is a truth-seeking mind." He described his impressions of the Boer army when he first saw it, as a recently taken captive: What men they were, these Boers! I thought of them as I had seen them in the morning riding forward through the rain--thousands of independent riflemen, thinking for themselves, possessed of beautiful weapons, led with skill, living as they rode without commissariat or transport or ammunition column, moving like the wind and supported by iron constitutions and a stern, hard Old Testament God.