One of the men said to me that he did not think any of us could understand what a luxury it was to have a wash, a comfortable bed, and clean clothes; that for months he had been marching and sleeping (in the open) in one suit of clothes, frequently wet through, and remaining wet until the sun came out to dry them; he said that on the high veldt the nights were very cold, and they frequently had nothing but their greatcoats to sleep in; if they were lucky, and the baggage waggons had kept up with them, they would also have a blanket and perhaps a mackintosh sheet; but that the baggage waggons had a habit of getting stuck at the last drift, and then they had only what they carried. If we had only come out to South Africa to nurse this one batch of thirty officers and men back to health, I think it would have been worth while, for they were just about as bad as they well could be, and one can't help thinking of the anxiety of their poor friends at home, who will have seen them reported on the "danger lists" from their Field Hospitals; and we go plodding on night and day trying to make them pull round. Only one man has died, and I think the rest will get on, though some of them are still pretty bad. Captain ---- had Cheyne Stokes breathing for two nights, and made us very anxious, but now he is distinctly better. The Bishop of Pretoria came to lunch with us the other day, and was very nice in visiting the men. We are expecting more men any day now, and on the 25th of this month we are to be officially "opened" (on Princess Christian's birthday, I believe); a crowd of people are expected from Durban and from Pietermaritzburg. I could not help thinking the other day, when all these thirty men were dumped in upon us in a couple of hours, of the old days in London when we thought we had had a very heavy day if six or eight patients were admitted to our ward in a day; and there we had everything ready to hand, and several well-drilled nurses to help. Here I can see it will take a little time before the sisters will realise that it is useless to try to have things done just the same as we can at home, and for them to distinguish between the _essentials_ of good nursing, which we must have, and the superfluous finish, which we must do without. XXX PINETOWN, NATAL, _June 1900_. We have had a stiff time of work since I wrote last. I think I told you that several orderlies were ill, when our first cases came in, with dengue fever, and soon the medical officers began knocking up with it--first one and then another; next, the sisters took it; no one has been very ill, but the fever was high for several days, and, of course, they were weak and seedy after it went down; so we have not had a full staff at work for some time, and with lots of bad cases in the wards it has made things very difficult.