The march was bad enough in its early stages; it became acute in its discomfort as the day wore on, and men and horses grew tired and more tired. By far the worst feature was the constant series of halts. The road taken by the column was filled for miles with a slow-crawling and packed procession of horses and wagons. The slightest check at the head of the procession meant a stop to all the rest, and because each wagon took a fraction of time longer than the one ahead to see its predecessor started and to get under way itself, what to a wagon in the front ranks was no more than a slowing to avoid running into the wagon ahead was easily translated a few teams back into a pull-up and immediate move on, and further back the line to a longer and longer interval of halt. So that in the middle and rear of the line there were frequent halts of a minute, two, three, and up to ten minutes. And if a wagon driving through an extra soft portion of road was caught and held beyond the immediate strength of the tired team to pull out, the halt might spin out into anything up to fifteen minutes. Several times during the day there were hour-long halts at cross- or fork-roads, while cross streams of traffic passed clear or entering streams were shuffled in. Towards mid-day exasperated officers strove to avail themselves of the frequent halts to water and feed. Buckets would be unhooked from their places under the wagons, and the drivers, leaning out and scooping the water up from the ditches, would perhaps get so far in the watering performance when there would be a hurried order to ‘Get mounted,’ the buckets would be emptied, the drivers hurriedly remount and move on again—to halt again perhaps within a hundred yards. No officer dare halt or hold his section of the column to complete his watering and feeding because the orders were imperative to press on and avoid halting the whole. A halt to feed was actually made about 2 P.M. when it was plain that there was no hope of getting the column in, as had been intended, by the early afternoon; but the halt was so short that there could be no attempt to cook food or make a hot drink for the men. They ate cold bully beef and biscuit while the horses fed, and finished their meal in the saddle when the horses moved again.