A party of officers went out shooting a few miles from the camp, and fell in with some herds of game, my brother and Captain Knox, 73rd, each bowling over a springbok; and Gawler, 73rd, bringing back a fine blesbok behind his saddle. We were now in the height of summer; the sun was most overpowering. The sandy plain danced in the hot air like the top of a kiln; inside our tents, though covered with blankets, the heat was insupportable; and without there was not a tree or a rock to be seen that could shelter us from the scorching rays. To add to our discomfort, the place was overrun with tarantulas, or, as the men insisted on calling them, "triantelopes," and scorpions, which we constantly found in the tents, and occasionally in our bedding or boots. Two puff adders were killed, which the men had found under their blankets in the morning. On the 27th, his Excellency, the Governor-General, arrived with his Staff and escort, all the Dutch in the place going out to meet him a mile from the town, and firing a _feu-de-joie_. As nothing gives a Boer greater pleasure than firing off his roer with as heavy a charge as it will carry, it was kept up a long time, in a very independent manner, and in all parts of the town at once. His Excellency afterwards rode down our ranks. The camp being pitched in _line_, was more than a mile long, and it was quite a walk from our tents on the extreme left to those of the Artillery on the right flank. In the close and sultry evenings, when sauntering up and down the long street of illuminated canvas, it was amusing to see the attitudes and employments of the different inmates of the wide open tents; here a solitary individual, in shirt sleeves, his candle stuck in an empty bottle, writing on the top of a box; there a quiet party playing a rubber; in the next a couple of Subalterns, joint occupants, stretched on their rough beds, reading the last _Grahams Town Journal_, or the soiled and crumpled fragment of an old English newspaper; in some, orderly-officers, cap and sword on the table, snatching a few moments' broken slumber; dinner parties in others, and loungers everywhere, from whose tents issued wreaths of smoke and sounds of merry voices. Turning into another street, one saw knots of Sergeants squatted cross-legged, writing "orders," from the dictation of the Sergeant-Major, and Adjutants scribbling away among busy clerks; while sentries paced in front of quiet, solemn looking marquees, the abodes of Colonels, Quarter-Masters-General and other "big wigs." Further on were tents full of tailors and shoemakers, repairing the wear and tear of former marches and preparing against others to come; commissariat contractors weighing and issuing forage and rations; and farriers shoeing horses by candlelight. Outside the lines, round a hundred smouldering fires, where the men collected, not for warmth, but to light their pipes, were endless parties of soldiers