At 9 a.m. our battalion moved forward and took up a new defensive line, facing the south, across the Ruwu River. South of the Ruwu River, on the left flank of the enemy’s position, lay the ruins of a 4·1 naval gun, laboriously transported inland from the _Koenigsberg_ battleship, which, in the early days of the war, our naval forces had crippled and rendered unseaworthy after chasing it to its lair in the mouth of the Rufiji River. About 7 o’clock on the previous night all had heard a terrific explosion, and there now lay the wreckage of it. The gun had been set up completely and with ingenious labour. Iron girders carried the heavy plank platform which received the deck mountings of the gun. Tools, and ironmongery, and rope, of ship-board nature, lay about the gun in profusion. In all construction the equipment and labour were thorough and workmanlike. The labour of carrying the material from Kahe Station, and the labour of erection, must have been colossal, one would think almost impossible. The observation post for the gun—a crow’s-nest platform with a rude ladder access—was in a high thorn tree towering above all its neighbours; and during the late battle, from this look-out, they had been able to direct the fire of the gun on to both Van Deventer’s column and our own. Close to the gun were the many grass huts of an encampment of some weeks’ standing, while all about those dwellings were native stores of mealie-meal, peas and beans, and calabashes and empty bottles, the leavings of a settled camp suddenly unsettled. The bridges over the Soko-Nassai and the Ruwu Rivers had been partially destroyed, and a party of us was selected to repair them, as soon as camp was established. Much of the old bridge timber was reclaimed from the floating ruins, wherever it was found to have jammed down-stream, and this saved us much labour, for otherwise make-shift timber would have had to be cut from the surrounding trees. Toward the end of the day the reconstruction was successfully completed. A rail was then run along either side of those bridges, and laced with broad banana leaves, so that transport animals would not see the drop to the river surface underneath. Grass and earth were then laid over the planking of the bridge, and again this was to assist the timid mules and cattle to face the crossing of an obstacle that they all instinctively feared. On 23rd and 24th March, the column remained camped at Ruwu River. The day after the battle some interesting information was obtained from prisoners and is here noted: Two companies of the enemy were at Engare Nairobi at the time of our march from the border, and were to have held up our advance on Moschi. They retired on Moschi without offering any prolonged or determined resistance, and it transpired that the Major in command was severely reprimanded by the O.C. there; and took it so much to heart that he committed suicide the same night.