(3 P.M.).—­Guns, Maxims, and rifles hailed lead into the Boer trenches for a long time, and then the infantry seized them, and the Boers retired.  The practice of the 38th and our guns seemed to me to be very good.  We have also a five-inch lyddite gun (Clements brought it), which sent up huge clouds of brown dust where the shell struck.  We have now advanced over very heavy ground to the late Boer position, halted, and ridden some way to water down a precipitous slope, into a long, rocky hollow.  From this point the country seems to change entirely to steep, rocky hills and hollows, rising and increasing to the whole Drakensberg range, which is blue and craggy on the sky-line.  They say the Boers have evacuated Bethlehem with a baggage train three miles long.  I don’t know why we are not following them up.  Perhaps the mounted infantry are.  Our horses are done up.  It was cruel work spurring and lashing them over heavy ploughed land to-day.

July 8.—­Rest at last.  It is Sunday morning, and we are all lying or sitting about, bathed in warm sunshine, waiting for orders, but it seems we shan’t move to-day.  My blankets are all spread out, getting a much-wanted drying, but what I chiefly want is a wash.  I have had three imperfect ones since leaving Bloemfontein and one shave, and my boots off for about ten minutes now and then.

(3 P.M.).—­Nothing on to-day.  I have had a wash in a thimbleful of water, and shaved, and feel another man.  They gave us an hour of stables, but the horses certainly needed it, as they never get groomed now, and are a shaggy, scraggy-looking lot.  I’m glad to say mine are quite free from galls and sore backs.  As one never sees their backs by daylight, it is interesting to get a good look at them at last.  They are very liable to sore backs (partly owing to the weight of the military saddle), if there is any carelessness in folding the blanket beneath the saddle.  It has been a real hot day, and yet there was thick ice on the pool we watered at this morning.

As to yesterday, it appears that De Wet and his army effected a safe retreat, but our General was pleased with the day’s work, and congratulated us and the 38th.  We put one Boer gun at least completely out of action, and it was captured by the infantry.  The infantry lost but few that day, but rather heavily the day before, especially the Munsters.  Paget is already very popular with us.  We trust his generalship and we like the man, for he seems to be one of us, a frank, simple soldier, who thinks of every man in his brigade as a comrade.  I understand now what an enormous difference this makes to men in the ranks.  A chance word of praise dropped in our hearing, a joking remark during a hot fight (repeated affectionately over every camp-fire at night), any little touch of nature that obliterates rank, and makes man and general “chums” for the moment; such trifles have an effect on one’s spirits which I could never have believed possible, if I had not felt their charm.  I wonder if officers know it, but it takes nothing for them to endear themselves to men.