There was yet another pronouncement to complete the eventfulness of the day, and to cause a lull in the domestic warfare waged against the Colonel and his Ironsides. By dint of hard work day and night the great thirty-pound gun constructed by De Beers was finished at last. Big things were expected from it; the surprise and consternation it was likely to create was a pleasing reflection. The construction of such a piece of ordnance in the middle of a desert was considered something to be proud of, and that reflected credit on the genius of Mr. Labram, who had planned it. Long Cecil (as it was called), in all its pristine perfection, was submitted to the public gaze, and was at once the cynosure of all eyes. On Friday it was tested, with complete success. The boom, at close quarters, was loud and alarming; and it required the despatch of a second shell to satisfy non-spectators that the gun had not been blown to pieces by the first. A few missiles were sent into the Intermediate Station, a couple of miles distant. Whether anyone was hurt did not transpire, but the moral effect produced was unmistakable. A panic appeared to ensue, and vehicles of all sorts were hurriedly requisitioned to enable the Boers to get away with their goods and chattels from the Intermediate to a more healthy station. Private letters were afterwards unearthed in which no attempt was made to conceal the alarm occasioned by this unexpected visitation. But the new gun was only a diversion, while the stream of invective against horseflesh went on like the brook for ever. It is an ill wind that blows nobody good; the truth of this was well exemplified in the luck of the dogs. The poor animals looked shockingly thin and wasted, and had for a long time been unable to move about with their wonted agility in pursuit of locusts and mosquitoes. The mongrels that had any fight or vitality left in them would engage in a terrific struggle on the streets at night for the contents of the refuse buckets which our primitive sanitation laws permitted to obstruct the pathways until morning. It need hardly be said that there was not much in the way of crusts, scraps, or bones to appease canine hunger, and the resultant keenness of the competition made the night extremely hideous. This snarling struggle for existence had gone on night after night to the supreme annoyance of martyrs who would fain have slept, and who urged (in letters to the Editor) the wholesale destruction of the snarlers as a work at once humane, essential, and congenial. This was in pre-horse food days, when the ox was paramount on our tables.