27th.--On arriving at our encamping ground, C---- was so much worse that a Medical Board was held on him at once, and leave to England recommended; before the rear of the column was up, we were off after the Governor-General's column, which had gone on in advance. Colonel MacDuff, in the kindest and most generous manner, tumbled everything out of his own mule waggon, and gave it up at once, to enable us to overtake and keep up with them. After a sharp trot of ten miles without any escort whatever, we were very glad to see his Excellency's little camp about a mile ahead. The whole plain at this point was completely whitened with endless flocks of migratory storks, apparently feeding on the locusts which were flying over in clouds. They were quite close to the waggon track on both sides. The unexpected appearance of a single horseman and waggon approaching across the solitary plain at such a late hour, brought out several officers, by whom we were most cordially and hospitably received, his Excellency also kindly sending to offer the invalid anything his better cuisine afforded. At three o'clock next morning, we trekked along with the cavalry and mule train at six miles an hour, a change most delightful after the slow pace of the ox waggons. Numbers of springbok and blesbok were seen in every direction, and 'jagged' whenever near enough to render it easy to overtake the party again, which was a very different affair from catching up the infantry column. After a good thirty miles, we came early in the afternoon to the Caledon River, which, though running very strong, was just fordable for the waggons, and encamped on the opposite bank. C----, who had eaten nothing for four days but a few teaspoonfuls of dirty brown arrow-root, made with muddy vley water, and sweetened with black ration sugar, grew rapidly worse, and towards evening became quite unconscious; all night long, as I watched under the waggon, he wandered, and talked incoherently of home. When all were gone to rest, the most perfect silence reigned through the camp: the night was splendid,--the clear bright heavens were studded with brilliant stars down to the very horizon,--the moon glided along in silvery light over the vast plain, on which imagination pictured thousands of wild animals sleeping or feeding in undisturbed enjoyment,--till the creaking of the waggon, as poor C---- tossed about on his miserable bed, recalled one's thoughts to realities. It wanted an hour to daylight, and the stars still shone with undiminished brightness, when suddenly the loud clear notes of the reveillé, never before welcomed, rung out from the head-quarter tent, and were taken up and repeated on all sides by the bugles and trumpets of each detachment; the general hum through the camp soon told that all were astir, and the toils of another day commenced.