For recreation we had football on Saturdays and—don't look shocked, dear reader!—Sundays; concerts and "smokers" on week-nights, etc. We rigged a spare hut up as a theatre and concert-hall, and it looked real good when completed. The stage was elevated, and fitted with kerosene lamps as foot and head lights; a nifty curtain, and the latest thing in brown-paper pillars painted like the front of a Maori _pataka_, with little Maori gods sitting on their heels, tongues sticking out sideways, and hands clasped on distended abdomens. The centre-piece was the gem of the show, however; it represented the War God, Tiki, chewing up the German Eagle between teeth like the tusks of an old bush wild pig. Altogether the whole outfit had a decidedly homelike air about it—although it didn't seem to strike our English visitors in that light. But, then, neither did our war-cry, even when it was chanted in their honour by two hundred healthy-lunged New Zealanders. They did seem to appreciate the concerts we gave, however, and, bragging apart, we had talent enough in the mob to make a show most anywhere. We even ran to a trick contortionist and dancer, whose favourite mode of progression towards his nightly couch was on his hands with his feet tucked away behind his ears. Taking it all in all, we were a very happy little colony, and despite the mud, frost and snow, I fancy those of us who may escape the Long Trail will reserve a kindly spot in their hearts for the old camp down Bulford way. But, alas! our ranks are already sadly thinned. As time went on our little force became reinforced by men joining up who had come long distances to do their bit for King and Country. We were a peculiarly heterogeneous crowd. There were men from South Africa, from the Argentine, from Canada, the United States, and even from Central America. One at least had fought in the Spanish-American War, and owned to being a naturalised Uncle Sam citizen. There were quite a few who had seen service in the late Boer War, some who had been members of the New Zealand contingents, others having gone through the campaign in one or other of the South African irregular corps. About 65 per cent. were born Maorilanders, the remainder being mostly "Colonials" of many years' standing. I should think we had representatives from every corner in New Zealand—and all _men_ in every sense of the word. Men of whom Adam Lindsay Gordon, the Australian stockman poet, might have been thinking when in his "Sick Stockrider" he penned the following lines— "I've had my share of pastime and I've done my share of toil: Life is short—the longest life a span; I care not now to tarry for the corn and for the oil, And the wine that maketh glad the heart of man. For good undone and gifts misspent and resolutions vain 'twere somewhat late to trouble— This I know, I'd live the same life over if I had to live again, And the chances are I go where most men go."