A diary is the last place in which to indulge in prophecy; it preserves too clearly the record of fallacy. In the last twenty-four hours have been reversed all the expectations of those in charge of this column, and even the direction of our march has been completely changed. My last entry was made at midday yesterday, and at 2.30 we resumed the march northwards, intending to reach a point ten miles distant at which there was water. The road was very heavy, or rather there was no road at all, the way lying over rough bush veldt, which consists of long, rank grass, with thorn bushes at small intervals and hardwood trees at greater distances--the whole something like an English paddock or park of young trees, except, of course, for the grass. This was heavy going; the mules were hot and tired, and the convoy trailed out and straggled; we spent quite two hours in covering the first four miles. I have said that the convoy straggled, and there were long intervals between one part of it and the next. During one such interval, the afternoon being very hot, I lay down under a tree and left my horse to graze. A cloud of locusts flying high and beating the air with millions of wings made a pleasant sound as of wind in a forest, and listening to these and to the thousand other minute noises that proceed from the insect life on a few square yards of veldt, I almost fell asleep. There was not a sound from the column; you could not imagine a more peaceful spot; and the obvious contrast between the purpose of this little army and its present circumstances impressed me more vividly than ever. And in less than half an hour from that moment of absolute peace the bullets were hailing round us and the air was resonant with the boom of guns. This is how it happened. It was half-past three when I left the shade of the tree and joined Colonel Mahon in front of the Horse Artillery, and at twenty minutes to four we heard the sound of rifle-shots--three or four--to the south-east. We had now got into a kind of wood in the bush, and here and there could see beyond the edge of it eastwards towards a hillside that sloped up from us to a ridge four miles away. On this ridge we could see a cloud of dust, and we were looking at it through glasses when a note came in from the right flank reporting a body of the enemy advancing on us from the east. Presently we made out on the edge of the dust a line of horsemen opening out on a kind of glade on the hillside, and the Brigadier ordered the guns to come into position where we were standing. It was really no sort of position at all, being merely a wood with no view from it, and in a hollow at that; but it was all that could be done.