We continued all through that day (Wednesday, November 24th) in one ceaseless struggle with mud and ploughed fields, and through scrub of Turkish oak and beech woods--no road anywhere. Towards evening we climbed a steep hill through scrub, and reached a plateau which would, under normal circumstances, have given great joy, for a more gorgeous view it would be impossible to find. At first I thought that the snow-white peaks in the high heaven, to the west, and south, were fleecy clouds, but I soon saw that they were snow-capped mountains, away up in the sky at an incredible height, as far away from this troubled earth as they could get. I envied them. But there was no time to look at scenery. Before us was a steep descent, and thousands of wagons, converging from tracks running east and west, were streaming down the steep hill and blocking us. I rode down, and then up and down again, for some time, vainly trying to find an officer who could break the line for us; when I saw an officer in the distance, he had always ridden away by the time I reached the place. But eventually we got into line and descended, and found ourselves once more upon a road. At 9 p.m. (Wednesday the 24th) the oxen could go no farther, and we outspanned for two hours in a wood by the side of the road, and we slept in the wagons for those two hours till 11 p.m. Then into the line again. But soon we were shunted to make room for artillery, and the difficulty of getting a place again was greater than ever. Some of the columns comprised two to three hundred wagons each. The sergeant, as usual, suggested that we should wait till to-morrow, but at 2. a.m. (Thursday the 25th) I found an officer of a munition column sitting by his fire by the roadside; I sat and talked with him for a while (J. G. and Mr. Little were asleep in the wagon), and then, when the chance came, he helped us into the line again. I am afraid that this officer will have a poor opinion of the intelligence of Englishwomen if he judged by my conversation that night; for I had been without sleep for seventy hours, and sometimes I couldn't prevent myself from dozing in the middle of a sentence, and then I had to try and tack the interrupted words correctly on to the next sentence, and I don't feel sure that they always fitted.