At Zand River, on the 10th, I was with the naval guns in action. It was simply grand to see the sailors work them. They were drawn up a drift in the Zand River by teams of thirty bullocks per gun, and opened fire from the top of the left bank on the enemy’s position at 7,200 yards range, and in five shots had blown up one Boer gun and knocked the whole shoot down about their ears. When the first gun was fired I happened to be quite near, although at one side of it, and the force of the explosion made me stagger as if a man were in a strong north-wester trying to make headway. Even the novelty of such things, however, soon began to wear off, and under the depressing influences of life in a rest camp outside Kroonstad the trooper took a more gloomy view of things military, writing: This place is like most of the so-called towns in South Africa, a mere cluster of tin huts with hardly a stone building in the lot. We, as usual, are not within a mile and a half of the town, and only one man per section of twenty-eight is allowed into it at a time. When you do get there, there is nothing much to buy or see, and prices are extremely high. Thank goodness, the climate at this time of year is just grand; at night it is very cold, and in the day warm, but never too warm unless one happens to be very hard at work. We seldom have any time to ourselves; even now, though I am writing letters, I am on duty with forty other men grazing the horses, about a couple of miles from camp. We are in a bad way for nags now, and very few of the Calcutta horses are left. It’s fun going out to commandeer things from the Boer farms, and it would make a person roar to see the different things different people choose to take. We are generally in a bad way for firewood, as this is practically a treeless country; so we break up chairs, beds, floors, doors, posts, rafters, and every blessed piece of wood to be got. Here as I sit on the side of a kopje I have a loaded rifle and cartridge bandolier on, and we are warned to stand to arms at any moment, as there are some wandering Boers about on the war-path who have cut the wires and played Old Nick with the railway and Bridges. It’s wonderful what good health men keep, considering the hardships they go through; we have not got a tent among the lot of us, barring those small servants’ tents used by the officers. Many among us have not even a change of clothes, on account of a _golmal_[11] made in regard to our kit bags, which got left behind at a camp near Bloemfontein. Goodness knows if we shall ever see those bags again. At present I have only the clothes on my back and one extra pair of socks to my name. Many of us have started growing long beards, and I have a beauty, but it wants a little trimming. I had a bath about four days ago, the first for weeks, and please goodness I will have a swim