The scarcity of ammunition began to cause anxiety, and also the condition of the atmosphere. The air was almost unbreathable. Fumes from dead horses, cows, pigs, which were strewed on the surrounding plains, rose in sunshine or rain as from a caldron of pestilence. There was no avoiding them, and death by worse than shot and shell--by slow ravaging malaria, or greedy epidemic--seemed to be traced by the finger of expectation across the foul atmosphere. No longer was there pleasure in gazing out at the beautiful green hills, that but a little while ago had been speckled with white tents and draped with the ethereal gossamer of blue smoke from the fitful flame of the camp fires. War had sounded its most discordant note--hard--emphatic. The tents were all struck. On the ground they lay prone, battered by the pouring rain. Camp fires were now few and far between, and the only smoke to be seen came from the snorting nozzles of implements of death. The rattle of musketry made the melody of day and night. The men, huddled up in their trenches, rained on by heaven-sent storm, rained on by hell-sent shrapnel, unable to raise a head lest the movement would be their last, still remained glorious fellows, cheery, jocose, hailing the humours of their tragic position with shouts of laughter, and skipping, with true heroism, the ghastly and the terrible that thrust itself between them and their courage. One of their number described the trenches as "simply ordinary trenches dug in the ground, with the earth and stones thrown out on the front side, strengthened by sand-bags. During the first day's fighting they were not very good, and the heavy losses sustained were attributable to that fact. The men improved them during the night, however, and they grew and grew until they were really like rabbits burrowing into the ground. During the shelling men would sit or lie down under the bank, and it was wonderful how the trenches protected them. Some of the trenches had hundreds of shells fired into them during the day, and as long as the men kept well down, they got off comparatively lightly. It was a fearful strain, however, as you might be crouching behind a traverse of sand-bags, when thump would come a shell and knock the sand-bags all over the place, upon which you would have to skip into the traverse and expose yourself while doing so to a hail of bullets from the Boer snipers. As the Boers were all round us, they brought guns to bear from different points, so as to enfilade the trenches, so we had to build transverse walls, sand-bags, or traverses to protect ourselves. The front Cape Mounted Rifles' trenches were fearfully battered during the day, and the tired men had to patch them up as best they could during the night. During the day we could not show our heads over the parapets, as there would immediately come a volley from the Boer riflemen."