With regard to the general health of the troops as subjects of surgical wounds, I suppose a better class of patient could scarcely be found. The men were young, sound, well set and nourished, and hard and fit from exercise in the open air. Beyond this, in spite of the scarcity of vegetables, a certain amount of fruit, rations of jam, and lime juice made any sign of scurvy a rare occurrence--I never saw a case during the whole of my wanderings. The meat was good, especially in the early part of the campaign, when it was for the most part brought from Australia and New Zealand, and we enjoyed the two collateral advantages of getting plenty of the ice which had been used for the preservation of the meat, in the camps, and the still greater one of having no butchers' offal to need destruction or prove a source of danger. When bread was to be got it was fairly good, and the biscuit was at all times excellent. Except on the advance from Modder River to Bloemfontein, as far as I could judge, no large bodies of the men ever really suffered from shortness of food, and then only for a few days. Drink was a more serious problem: in the early days beer was to be got at the canteens, but with the increase of numbers and difficulties of transport this ceased to be the case, and water was the sole fluid available. This was often muddy, and the soldiers would take very little care what they drank unless under constant supervision; hence a great quantity of very undesirable water was drunk. None the less I think the water was more often the cause of sand diarrhoea than of enteric fever. A large quantity of fluid was by no means a necessity if the men would only have exercised some self-control. During the first week I spent at Orange River, I drank lime juice and water all day, but after that time, by a very slight amount of determination, I thoroughly broke myself of the habit, and drank at meal-times only. Most of the men however emptied their water-bottles during the first hour of the march, and the rest of the day endured agony, seizing the first opportunity of drinking any filthy water they met with. When, for instance, we camped near a vlei, and the General took the greatest care that the mules and horses should be watered at one spot only, in order to preserve the cleanliness of the rest of the pool, the men would often go and fill their water-bottles amongst the animals' feet rather than take the trouble to walk the few necessary yards round. In such particulars they needed constant supervision.