before leaving this place, as there is a river here which, though rather full of dead mules and horses, is better than nothing at all. Yesterday three horses got stuck in the river and were drowned, and this morning when watering horses I saw three mules and another nag which belonged to our Maxim gun team _panklagged_, and I fear that they also have been lost. There is most awful ‘pank’ in some of the rivers and ponds, and on more than one occasion we have all but lost men when crossing or watering. I have had about enough of it, and so has everyone else. It does make a man feel creepy when he has shells bursting about all round, and Boer shells do burst, for all that is said otherwise. They make a noise in the air like a huge flock of ducks when they take a dive downwards in their flight; and the rifle bullets going past sound like a breeze playing in the branches of a tree. I have now been in three engagements, and I’m perfectly satisfied! I don’t mind it where there is some cover, and you can see your enemy; but when the bullets come from Lord knows where, it’s real tough bread and butter to chew. The day we lost so heavily the Boers were rifle firing at over 2,000 yards, and as they use smokeless powder it was impossible to see them. In those closing sentences there is a realistic touch that tells of the weariness and heart-sickness from which soldiers invariably suffer in days of rest following a succession of hard marches and heavy fighting. When there is stern work to be done, or a foe to be faced, these men may succumb to sheer exhaustion without a word of complaint. It is only after a day or two of comparative inaction, when supposed, by a pleasant fiction, to be resting in camp, that they will confess to being tired of the whole thing, or, as Tommy expresses it, ‘fair fed up.’ A total change comes with the order for a fresh advance, and everybody welcomes it except, perhaps, the regimental commanding officer, who knows that his horses would be all the better if given more time to regain condition, and his men more happy if there were a chance of re-clothing them. But what do rags and tatters matter when days have to be spent in marching through clouds of red dust and night blots out all distinction between weather-stained khaki and the soil on which it is laid? Colonel Lumsden must have felt the care for such things heavy on him, but he gave no sign of it in the notes by which he summarised the renewal of operations and of hard work that was in inverse ratio to the number of words employed in describing it: