It was amusing to see the men of the 60th when a shell pitched among them to-day.  How they regarded it as a busy man regards the intrusion of the housemaid—­just a harmless necessary nuisance, and no more.  The cattle took the little automatic shells in much the same spirit, but with an addition of wonder—­staring at them and snuffing with bovine astonishment.  The Kaffir herdsmen first ran yelling in every direction, and then rushed back to dig the shell up, amid inextinguishable laughter.  The Hindoo grass-cutter neither ran nor laughed, but awaited destiny with resignation.  By the way, there is a Hindoo servant in the 19th Hussar lines, who at the approach of a “Long Tom” shell always falls reverently on his face and prays to it.

At sundown, in hopes of adding to our starvation rations, I went out among the thorns at the foot of Caesar’s Camp to shoot birds and hares.  But the thorns are fast disappearing as firewood, and the appalling rain almost drowned me in the rush of the spruits.  So we dined as usual on lumps of trek-ox thinly disguised.  Talking of rain, I forgot to mention that the deluge on Friday night drowned six horses of the Leicester Mounted Infantry, carried away twenty-seven of their saddles, broke down the grand shelter-caves of the Imperial Light Horse, carried their bridge away to the blue, and flooded out half the poor homes of natives and civilians dug in the sand of the river banks.

     Sunday, December 31, 1899.

Most of my day was wasted in an attempt to get leave to visit Intombi.  Colonel Exham (P.M.O.) and Major Bateson had asked me to go down and give a fair account of what I saw.  General Hunter took my application to the Chief, but Sir George thought it contrary to his original agreement with Joubert, that none but medical and commissariat officers should enter the camp.  So Intombi remains unvisited—­a vision of my own.  In high quarters I gather that, considering the great difficulties of the case, the camp is thought a successful piece of work, very creditable to the officers in charge.  Otherwise the day was chiefly remarkable for the unusual amount of firing at the outposts, and the arrival by runner of a Natal newspaper with the news that Lord Roberts was coming out.  As it was New Year’s eve, we expected a midnight greeting from the Boer guns, and sure enough, between twelve and one, all the smaller guns in turn took one shot into vacancy and then were still.

     January 1, 1900.

The Bulwan gun began the New Year with energy.  He sent thirty of his enormous shells into the camps and town, eight or nine of which fell in quick succession among the Helpmakaar fortifications, now held by the Liverpools.