_November 30._--Day breaks across white mists on the plain, and then comes gorgeous sunshine, with a glow of colour all round, brilliant orange in the east above Bulwaan, deepening to blood-red in the west behind the rugged crest of Mount Tintwa and the pitted peaks of Mont aux Sources. From daybreak onward there is heavy artillery fire on camp and town from every gun the Boers have mounted. Our howitzers and the "Meddler" began it with a merry little set-to between themselves, doing no harm. Then Surprise Hill, Telegraph Hill, Rifleman's Ridge, Bulwaan, and Lombard's Kop joined in, the last aiming straight for the hospital, with its Red Cross flag. Two shells had fallen close to that building, from which all haste was made to remove the helpless patients. Most of them had been got out when the third shot came crashing into the largest ward, and from among the ruins one dead man and nine freshly wounded were taken. Rifle fire quickened then about Observation Hill, and bullets flying overhead made many think that the Boers were coming on, but it all died away into silence without further casualties on our side. At night the column southward flashes another long signal on the clouded sky, and Boer search-lights try to obliterate it by throwing their feeble rays across the beam that shines like a comet athwart the darkness above Tugela heights. _December 1._--"Long Tom" of Pepworth's Hill, which has not fired since "Lady Anne" silenced it days ago, is now reported to be cracked and useless, but the Boers are preparing emplacements for another heavy piece of ordnance on a flat-topped nether spur of Lombard's Kop, where they have a persistently disagreeable 40-pounder already mounted. We do nothing to prevent this increase of hostile artillery, but content ourselves with inventing new names for the batteries, so that the intelligence map may be kept up to date with fullest details. This spur henceforth is to be known as Gun Hill, probably because the weapon already in position there has made itself conspicuously unpleasant by shelling the headquarters and intelligence offices. From it three successive shells were fired this morning into or near the convent where Colonel Dick-Cunyngham, Major Riddell, and other convalescent wounded have their quarters. Middle Hill gun only fired a few rounds to-day, and was promptly silenced by our "Great Twin Brethren," the howitzers of Waggon Hill.