Notwithstanding the interest which the operations undertaken between June and September excited, and the high hopes generally entertained that the fortress would soon fall, the little-varying duty in the trenches became monotonous in the extreme, and all wished earnestly that this phase of the war might quickly pass away. Some cricket matches served to while away a few of the weary hours; but the weather was extremely hot and oppressive, and the season was sickly. There was, of course, much to distract the minds of men who, for the first time, found themselves in the presence of an enemy; but it was different for those who had been almost constantly at work for many months on the same spot and at the same object, and thus even these distractions lost much of their novelty and interest. “The siege was really getting too fearfully tedious now,” writes Colonel Tower, about August 28th. “The weather was hot and sultry; our camp was a long way from the works. We used to parade about 5 p.m., having crammed in all the victuals we could get. We toiled down three miles in the sun, carrying great coat, haversack, revolver, and defiled into the zigzags before sundown; all night (if in the advance) we were straining our eyes over the parapet, momentarily expecting a sortie, being graped and shelled the whole time, and losing a good many of our party. The sun got up very early, and often a breeze with it, and from sunrise to sunset we had to sit in a dusty ditch, being shelled, our food—salt pork and biscuit—covered with dust and sand. The men could not show their noses over the parapet.... The deep blue sea stretching away, dotted with ships coming in and going out, looked so cool and nice in the distance, I used to think of home far away, and long for the siege to be over. It really seemed now as if it were drawing to a close. The bridge across the harbour had been constructed some time, and could be for no other purpose than as a means for the enemy to retire. The French pressed the enemy at the bastion Du Mât [the Flagstaff Battery] and the Malakoff; I used to spend a good deal of time in the French trenches, and knew the whole position as well as any one in the army.” The casualties in the Battalion were not very severe during these three months, and amounted to 47 wounded, of whom 6 died of their injuries. Besides this number, an Officer of the Regiment, Captain Hon. R. Drummond, was wounded, on August 25th, in the trenches, having been shot through the chest; he left the Crimea on September 6th, but died before he reached England, unfortunately, indeed, just before the steamer anchored at Spithead. The general health of the Battalion may be seen from the following table:—