Owing to the great heat, we move the position of our camps once a week. What with dead horses and cattle the air is absolutely putrid, and ’tis a precaution most imperative. On the march the foul smells encountered are terrible, owing to the number of dead horses and cattle lying on the highway. From Pretoria to Balmoral we passed as many as two or three hundred carcases in different stages of decomposition. The very water is often polluted, and considerable inconvenience is the consequence. In a previous letter I incidentally mentioned veldt fires, but at the Crocodile River camp it was our luck to be in the thick of one, and that at midnight. We had made the camp at sundown, and as darkness set in we were enraptured with the pyrotechnic display of the surrounding kopjes on fire. It was a magnificent sight, though awful. By 10 P.M. the camp was hushed in slumber except for stable pickets, when the wind shifted and blew the flames towards the camp. Gradually the veldt near us took fire, till at midnight we were completely surrounded. The roar was appalling, while myriads of insects filled the air. The situation was one needing immediate action, as every moment was precious. ‘Stand to your horses and saddle up,’ were the orders anxiously given. All was confusion—men hurriedly folding up blankets, &c., Kaffir boys running about conducting oxen to inspan, bodies of men running towards the fast approaching flames carrying blankets to beat them down. In the midst of all a patrol of the 18th Hussars were seen completely cut off from the camp and surrounded with flaming veldt. A rush was made, and hundreds of blankets soon cleared a space, and the patrol emerged, the horses showing every sign of terror. It was an anxious time, but in half an hour all was safe, and the flames had been successfully diverted from their course of destruction. Such a fire in the back veldt it would have been impossible to cope with. On the western veldt these fires destroy complete herds of cattle annually, and are much dreaded. [Illustration: THE LAUNDRY (_From a sketch by J.S. Cowen_) ]