below for the horses, and it has been a great relief.... You wouldn’t believe how tame all the horses are now. You can do anything with them. Poor devils, they have had a frightful time. Saturday again was very hot, but the wind gradually came round ahead, and by evening there was a good breeze; and yesterday and to-day has been lovely: a stiff breeze ahead and quite cool. It is like heaven, and the horses are like different creatures and picking up fast. It is sure to last now, I think, right in to Suez, and I hope our troubles are over.... The men have worked like slaves, and so have we for that matter.” Another officer, Lieutenant Watson Smyth, writes of the start at Bombay, after five or six hours spent in slinging horses into the hold: “At 8.30 I went down to the horse deck, and never have I met such heat. The horses were packed in pens of five, and were all, all over in a white lather; The temperature was taken by the Vet. and it was 133. This is 6 degrees more than the highest recorded in India, so you can see it was real hot....” _November 29, 1914._--“It has been very hot indeed the last few days, and the horses are feeling it very much. Only two have died so far.... I think I said that most of my squadron are in the fore-hold, and the other squadrons are on the decks above it round the hatchway, so that if anything has to be taken out of their decks by a crane it has to be hung over the hold while being hoisted. One of the horses I mentioned died in one of their decks, and when slung up to be dropped overboard, slipped out of the sling and fell forty feet into the hold. Luckily he only grazed one of our horses, another half-inch and it would have been killed. I have decided to take that horse for a charger, as if he can have an escape like that nothing else is likely to hurt him.” It was a rough experience, and not a very good preparation for the cold of a winter in Northern France; but for the moment the discomfort was over, and throughout the voyage not many horses died. The Thirteenth lost four or five in all. Three-quarters of the troop horses were Indian country-breds, and the rest Australians, and therefore also accustomed to some heat. But the country-breds were rather light for British Cavalry, and hardly fitted at best to face snow and wet. The Thirteenth found the banks of the Suez Canal lined with troops, largely Indian, who were expecting an attack from the Turkish army gathered in the desert to the north, but no attack came while the convoy was in the Canal.