We were up at 3.30 the next morning, Friday, December 3rd, to pack the ponies and get ready to start at daybreak. We must now leave our much-loved and faithful cars behind; we gave them to the Prefect, with instructions that he must burn them if the enemy arrived. We should badly miss their sleeping accommodation, but for me personally it was one anxiety the less. Possessions are at the root of all anxiety. At 6.30 a.m. our reduced column, with its deformed carts, set out through the narrow streets of Petch, to be swallowed up in the great mountains; these already seemed ashamed of what they had in store for us, and were hiding behind thick mists of cloud and rain. Nothing was visible except the endless stream of two-wheeled carts, oxen, horses and soldiers, behind us and ahead of us. The road that day was not worse than usual, and we encamped at dark in a tiny but dry field, behind a farmhouse in which Headquarters Staff were spending the night. The P.M.O. came and had a talk with us, and said we were to move on at one next morning. That was the last time we saw or heard of Headquarters Staff till we reached Scutari. We departed soon after 1 a.m., December 4th, and in a quarter of an hour, we arrived at a block, which, in the darkness, seemed to be composed of all the carts and oxen and soldiers of the universe--apparently on an open plain. It was too dark to see what lay ahead, blocking progress, and no one knew anything, except that movement was impossible. So we lit fires and sat around them till daylight at 6.30, when we had coffee, and moved with the multitude, a few hundred yards. But we were at once again hopelessly blocked. Then suddenly appeared, for a few minutes, our old friend, the cheery Artillery Major, who had just performed the heartrending task of destroying his three batteries. What were our little discomforts, in comparison with the grief which this keen officer and patriot must have suffered, in the destruction of his beloved guns--the last defences of his country? We took advantage of the halt to send the drivers for hay for the oxen and horses, and we outspanned for two hours. The snow was now melting under a hot sun, and making a miry slush, which was not warming for the feet; but by the time we had procured hay, it was daylight, and as we could then see that there was no road, there seemed to be no object in waiting, so we wriggled out of the chaos of other columns, and took a track of our own--an awful track over rocks, and scrub, and amazing mud, but in the right direction; and at night we bivouacked on the slopes of a wood, overlooking plains and mountains which lay in the direction of Macedonia.