_Wednesday, 11th July._--The weather at Durban is lovely and I am already feeling better. Have met Nugent of the _Thetis_ and Major Brazier Creagh, also down with jaundice. My letters have lately all gone wrong, but to-day I received a batch to my great delight. And now I must perforce close this record of personal experiences, written perhaps more to amuse and satisfy myself than for the perusal of others; more especially as this being a personal Diary I have been obliged by force of circumstances to use the pronoun "I" more than I would otherwise wish. The war seems played out so far as one can judge. It appears to be becoming now a guerilla warfare of small actions and runaway fights at long ranges; these furnish of course no new experiences or discoveries to Naval gunners; in fact, the sameness of them is depressing, and what with marching, fighting, poor living, dysentery, and jaundice, I humbly confess that my martial zeal is at a much lower ebb than it was a year ago. Yet time may produce many changes and surprises, and I may yet find myself again at the front; who knows! * * * * * _Thursday, 26th July._--The quick return to health which the change to the warmth of Durban effected made me only too glad to get back to the front again with the object of "being in at the death." I travelled up as far as Ingogo with Captain Reed, R.A. (now a V.C.); thence on to Sandspruit, and on again in a Scotch cart, which Major Carney, R.A., M.C., lent me, to Grass Kop, a hill six miles off the station and some 6,000 feet high. Ugh! I shall never forget the drive and the jolting, and the sudden cold after Durban weather. Still I was able to rejoin my guns before dark, and to receive them over from Lieutenant Clutterbuck who had been sent to relieve me when I was obliged to leave the front. He fortunately had a share in taking this hill with the Dorsets when in command of my guns. With a whole battalion at first of Dorsets under Colonel Law (who had dug marvellous good trenches), and later on with three Companies of the South Lancashires, and after that two Companies of the Queen's (note the descending scale of numbers), we defend this position, monarchs of all we survey, and therefore bagging all we can get, not only of the numerous guinea fowl, partridge, and spring buck dwelling on its sides and in its ravines, but also, it must be confessed, of the tamer and tougher bipeds from surrounding farms that were nearly all deserted by their owners. For many weeks we had a great deal of fun in our little shooting expeditions. Major Adams of the Lancashires, a keen sportsman, was always sighting game through his binoculars as he was going on his constant patrols round the defences, and he allowed the rest of us to shoot when able. Thus in the midst of our work we had many a jolly hour in those occasional expeditions close to our lines; one day we made a large bag of geese and started a farmyard just in