To-day has passed in peace, but marked by a very natural depression as we have seen train after train laden with sick, wounded, and non-combatants, go out to the neutral camp at Intombi Spruit, where these people will have to remain under a white flag so long as this humiliating investment of Ladysmith may last.  To make the matter worse they were sent out at first with insufficient supplies for urgent needs, and with so few attendants that tents for all could not be pitched the same night.  Even now many non-combatants have to lie in small patrol tents of thin canvas with a double slope, under the ridge of which there is barely room for a child to stand upright, and the camp is placed on ground so flat, near the river bank, that heavy rains might convert it into a mere swamp.  There, however, General Joubert decided that the neutral camp must be pitched, and those who were too weak or spiritless to help themselves, must needs be thankful for such gracious concessions.  Some, not quite satisfied with the protection this affords, are digging burrows deep into clay banks by the river side, where they will be even more liable to be flooded out.  In strict justice it must be said that many sick and wounded went out, not of their own free will, but because, being under medical care, they had no option.  The result of this is that men suffering from slight ailments, or whose wounds would not incapacitate them from duty longer than a week or so, are virtually prisoners of war, only to be released at the pleasure of the Boers, or until we reclaim them by force of arms.  These are unpleasant things to write, but they are true none the less.

The Boer guns have preserved all along an absolute silence, which was not broken on our side until ten at night, when a sentry set off his rifle.  This roused the whole camp, and soldiers everywhere stood to their arms until the cause of this false alarm was discovered.

November 6.—­At daybreak this morning, Second Lieutenant Hopper, 5th Lancers, came into camp, having got through the Boer lines by a ruse as clever as it was sportsmanlike.  He brought despatches from the General commanding at Estcourt.  His difficulties show that though a soldier may get through the Boer lines, they are now tightening round us, and unless a British force strong enough to break through can be assembled quickly, we are in for a long siege here.  Nobody gave the Boers credit for so much enterprise, and if Sir George White made a mistake, as I think he did, in not sending all the women and children away from Ladysmith when Dundee was abandoned, this error probably arose from faulty information, for which those who thought they knew the Boers and their resources were in the first instance responsible.