Next day we rose early, but found that we should have to spend five or six days at De Aar. This news was not at all pleasant. I have been in many dreary and uninteresting spots in the world, _e.g._, Aden or Atbara Camp, but I have never disliked a place as much as I did De Aar. The whole plain has been cut up by the incessant movement of guns, transport waggons and troops, and the result is that one is nearly choked and blinded by the dense clouds of dust. Huge spiral columns of sand tear across the plain over the tops of the kopjes, carrying with them scraps of paper and rubbish of all sorts. The irritation produced by the absorption of this permeating dust into the system militates to some extent against the rapid recovery of men who suffer from diseases like dysentery or enteric fever. It travels under doors and through window sashes, and a patient is obliged, whether he will or no, to swallow a certain amount of it daily. Nevertheless the South African dust does not appear to be so bacillus-laden as, _e.g._, that of Atbara Camp, which, amongst other evil effects, continually produced ulceration in the mouth and throat. De Aar lies in the centre of a large plain, shut in on every side by kopjes. In fact its position is very similar indeed to that of Ladysmith. The hills on the east and west were always held by pickets with some field guns belonging to the Royal Artillery and the Prince Alfred's Artillery Volunteers. A much loftier line of kopjes to the north was untenanted by the British, but any approach over the veldt from the north-east was blocked by several rows of shelter trenches and a strongly-constructed redoubt with wire entanglements, ditch, and parapet topped with iron rails. Signallers were continually at work, and at night it was quite a pretty sight to watch the twinkling points of the signal lights as they flashed between the tents on the plain and the distant pickets on the tops of the kopjes. Boers had been seen to the east and on the west; some at least of the Dutch colonists were in open revolt; so officers and men were always prepared at a moment's notice to line the trenches for defence, while the redoubts and the batteries on the hills were permanently garrisoned. Everybody loathed De Aar. With the exception of some feeble cricket played on some unoccupied patches of dusty ground, and a couple of shabby tennis courts, usually reserved for the "patball" of the local athletes of either sex, there was absolutely nothing to do, and we were too far off Modder River to feel that we were at all in the swim of things. The heat was sometimes appalling. On Christmas day the temperature was 105 deg. in the shade, and most people took a long siesta after the midday dinner and read such odds and ends of literature as fell into their hands.