On the 3rd the Riflemen in advance forded the Kei river, here about 350 yards wide, and knee deep, and waited on the other bank for the Division. After breakfast, rifles were fired off and cleaned from the effects of the last night’s rain, and they marched towards Butterworth. On reaching a hill, afterwards well known to Riflemen by the name of Mount-Misery, they halted and bivouacked for the night. On the next morning at daylight they resumed their march, and arrived at the Missionary Station of Butterworth at six in the evening: a distance of nearly thirty miles. The Missionary’s house and the church were in ruins, having been burnt down; but every wall and corner which remained was occupied by the weary soldiers, glad of even such insufficient shelter. For scarcely had the outlying picquets been posted, when heavy and continuous rain came on, and lasted throughout the night. On the 5th Captain Gibson’s company rejoined. The rain still continuing the men suffered much. They were glad to gather stones on which to lie, to keep them off the streaming ground; and even these were sometimes washed away by the rills formed in paths and tracks. This rain continued during the whole of the 6th and until the afternoon of the 7th; nearly seventy hours of incessant rain. On the 6th five days’ ration of biscuit, which had from December 29 been reduced to six ounces a day, was served out to the men; but hunger takes no account of Commissariat measurement, and long before the expiration of the five days, the Riflemen were picking gum off the trees, and eating it to assuage their need. At this time Sir Peregrine Maitland being recalled, left the army; and the command of the division again devolved on Colonel Somerset. Fine weather having at last come on, the men wrung out and rinsed their wet shirts and dried them in the sun. In the evening the rifles were inspected and the ammunition examined; for much of it had been damaged by the wet. On the 8th at six in the morning, they marched for Spring-Flats where they arrived at eleven. After a halt of three hours, during which the weakly men and those who had sore feet fell out of the ranks and were marched to the Kei under an officer of another regiment, they resumed their march for Kreili’s Corner, and halting at six o’clock, bivouacked for the night. At dawn on the 9th, intelligence having come in of a quantity of cattle, said to be a few miles ahead, they marched towards Kreili’s Corner; and with a halt of one hour for breakfast, and two for dinner, continued their march till eight in the evening, when they bivouacked.