Arrived at the top of the pass, we found ourselves at the head of a deep ravine, on the side of which, a quarter of a mile from the summit, it was decided that the camp should be pitched. A more uncomfortable place for a camp could hardly be imagined. The ground was ploughed, and was extremely sloping. The supply of water was deficient, and was four or five hundred feet below us, and the wind swept over the top of the pass with piercing force. However, there was no help for it. The 4th had started four miles behind us, and there was no ground even so good as that selected for another seven miles. Immediately on our arrival, and before the tents were pitched, a tremendous shower came on, and everyone got drenched before the baggage-animals arrived with the tents. The black earth turned, as if by magic, into slimy clay, and our position was the reverse of agreeable. Far worse, however, was the condition of the 4th, which, having halted at Dildee for two hours, did not arrive until between eight and nine in the evening, wetted of course to the skin. We now felt bitterly the inconvenience of not having even one change of clothes with us. It could, however, have hardly been foreseen that, after having had only two or three showers since we arrived in Abyssinia, we were to be exposed to heavy rains regularly every day, which has, with one exception, been the case for the last week. As it is, it is impossible to say how long we shall be in our present state of only having the clothes we stand in. It is a week since we left our little all behind us at Lât. We are still a week’s march from Magdala, and may calculate on being fully a month without our baggage. Officers have all managed somehow to bring on a second shirt and pair of stockings; but the soldiers have no change of any kind. For them, and indeed for the officers, to be wetted through day after day, and to have no dry clothes to put on, and this at an altitude of 11,000 feet above the sea, and when the cold at night is more pierceing than anything I ever experienced, is trying in the extreme, and a great many are already complaining of rheumatic pains. That night at the top of the hill was the most unpleasant that officers or men have passed since their arrival in the country: wet through, cold, and lying upon ground so steep that we kept perpetually sliding down off our waterproof sheet. As to lying in the orthodox fashion, side by side, with all the heels close to the pole, like the spokes of a wheel, the thing was simply impossible. In many of the tents the men’s feet would have been a yard higher than their heads. However, there were few grumblings at the discomfort; but I can answer that I for one was greatly pleased when I saw daylight break, to get up from my uncomfortable sliding couch. We were ordered to start at eight, but the men’s things were still so wet that the march was postponed for two hours, to allow the blankets and greatcoats to be dried in the wind and sun.