From the transports in Colombo Harbour 200 men at a time went ashore from each ship; each party being broken up into smaller ones of twenty men with an officer. Going ashore in the boats we pulled through clouds of lemon, chrome, and golden butterflies fluttering over the water in all directions, reminding one of yellow poplar leaves drifting to the ground in an autumn wind. Once ashore the brilliant colours and fragrant flower scents seemed like fairyland after the heat and smell of the horse decks. Along the brick-red sandy roads the rickshaw coolies pattered with their slouch-hatted loads. Under the shade of the Eastern trees the soldier snatched one hour of the real joy of living. Interested parties explored the Buddhist temples, the air heavy with incense and the scent of many flowers. Down on the Galle Face, where the cocoanut palms weep over the sea, the revelation of poverty and mendicity came as a shock to the young New Zealanders--thousands of beggars, the halt, the lame and the blind--small boys begging pennies, old men with one foot in the grave complaining in broken English, "No mother, no father, sixpence please!" [Illustration: [_Photo by Guy_ ON THE HORSE DECKS.] The New Zealand soldier away from home is prodigal with his money, and the Cingalese and Indian shopkeepers parcelled up many thousands of pounds worth of gifts, ranging from precious stones and expensive silks down to the cocoanut-wood elephants and the little green-backed beetles. The censors never left their desks, so energetic were the correspondents, but gradually the pile grew less and the mail bags more swollen; the shouting gangs of dirty coolies passed--basketful by basketful--the contents of their loaded barges into the hungry stokeholds; all water tanks were refilled, and on the morning of November 17, the New Zealand transports, escorted by the "Hampshire," headed once again for the deep water. [Illustration: [_Lent by Major Brunt, W.I.B._ THE "HAMPSHIRE." Transferring the "Emden" prisoners to the "Hampshire" at Port Said.] The Monotony of the Voyage.