BURYING OUR DEAD BY THE ROADSIDE
THE HISTORIC PLAIN OF KOSSOVO
CHAPTER XIX
After Pirot the country was magnificent: narrow roads wound round and round, ascending the high mountains, and from view-points on the hills, we could see behind us, and before us, only interrupted by the curves of the mountain road, endless columns of the Serbian Army; this was not visible as soldiers, oxen, guns, and transport, but as the sinuous movement of a grey serpent winding itself round and round the mountain passes.
I was surprised at finding that there were to be no outspans. In South Africa it was the invariable rule to rest the oxen for two hours after every three hours of trek. But now we were told that we must only halt when the columns ahead of us halted, and that was very occasionally, for a quarter of an hour at a time. Meals, therefore, were not a prominent feature of the day.