“June 13.—...  The moon was full this day, and to see it rising sheer out of the level veldt was a thing to remember.  For ten minutes before there is a red glow on the horizon, which intensifies till a burning orange rim shows above, and soon the whole circle is flaming clear of the earth, only not a circle, but seemingly almost square with rounded corners.  Round its path on the veldt there is a broad wash of dusty gold.  A lot of us came out of the tents, and were spell-bound by the sight.  Every evening the sun goes down plumb into the veldt out of a cloudless sky, and comes up just so in the morning.  While he is gone it is bitterly cold now, always with hard frost, but in the middle of the day often very hot.  I have never known such extremes of temperature before.

“June 16.—­Yesterday was a red-letter day for me and Williams.  We got leave off afternoon stables, getting gunners to water and groom our horses, and had from after dinner till 8.30 P.M. to ourselves.  That was the first time I have ever missed duty from any cause whatever since I enlisted on January 3rd, so I think I deserved it.  We started off, feeling strangely free, and hardly knowing how to use our freedom, for two hours is the longest interval from work one usually gets.  We determined to visit the Irish Hospital Camp, where four of our chaps were sick.  The Irish Hospital came out with us in the Montfort, so we knew them all.  We hired a carriage in the town(!) and drove the rest of the way feeling like lords.  We had a long talk with the invalids, who were mostly doing well, in most comfortable quarters, large roomy tents, with comfortable beds, and clean white nurses going about.  Pat Duffy turned up as a hospital orderly, looking strangely clean.  The air was heavy with rich brogue.  Later we strolled off, and shopped and shaved in the town, had afternoon tea, and then went to a hotel and wrote letters till 6.30, when we dined in magnificent style, and then sauntered back, feeling as if an eternity had passed, and lay down in the dust to sleep.

“June 17.—­Sunday.—­A night and day of rain, in spite of the fact that everybody was clear hitherto that the rainy season was over months ago.  Exercise at eight, and a smart trot round the country warmed horses and men, for it is very cold.  Meanwhile, the horse lines had been shifted, for they were ankle-deep in mud.  Once or twice in the day we were called out to rub legs, ears, and backs of the horses.

“I am now lying on my back in our tent on a carefully constructed couch of sacks, rugs, and haversacks, with a candle stuck in a Worcester sauce bottle to light me.  Most of us are doing the same, so the view is that of the soles of muddy boots against strong light, the tentpole in the middle hung thick with water-bottles, helmets, and haversacks, spurs strung up round the brailing, faces (dirty) seen dimly in the gloom beneath.  Some write, some sew, some