We left A. at 2 p.m. on Friday.  The men were on barges slung on either side of the river-boat, on which various details, our officers and the General and his staff were.

I brought my gun and 150 cartridges, and was unexpectedly soon rewarded:  for one of the A.C.C’s staff came along after lunch and asked for someone to come with him in the motor-boat and shoot partridges.  As I was the only one with a gun handy I went.  We raced ahead in the motor-boat for half-an-hour and then landed on the right bank and walked up the river for two-and-a-half hours, not deviating even to follow up coveys.  There were a lot of birds, but it was windy and they were wild and difficult.  Also with only two guns and three sepoys we walked over as many as we put up.  Craik (the A.D.C’s name, he is an Australian parson in peace-time) was a poor performer and only accounted for three.  I got thirteen, a quail, a plover and a hare.  I missed three or four sitters and lost two runners, but on the whole shot quite decently, as the extreme roughness of the hard-baked ploughed (or rather mattocked) land is almost more of an obstacle to good shooting than the behaviour of the birds.  Craik was a stayer, and as the wind dropped at sunset and the birds grew tamer he persevered till it was dark.  Then we had to walk three-quarters-of-a-mile before we could find a place where the boat could get in near the bank:  so we had a longer and colder chase to catch up the ship than I had bargained for, especially as I had foolishly forgotten to bring a coat.  However, when I got too cold I snuggled up against the engine and so kept parts of me warm.  Luckily the ship had to halt at the camp of a marching column, so we caught her up in one-and-a-quarter hours.

I pitched my bed on deck up against the boiler, and so was as warm as toast all night.

Yesterday morning we steamed steadily along through absolutely bare country.  The chief feature was the extraordinary abundance of sand-grouse.  I told Mamma of the astonishing clouds of them which passed over A. Here they were in small parties or in flocks up to 200:  but the whole landscape is dotted with them from 8 a.m. till 11 and again from 3 to 4:  so that any random spot would give one much the same shooting as we had at the Kimberley dams.  An officer on board told me that when he was here two months ago, a brother officer had killed fifty to his own gun:  and a Punjabi subaltern got twenty-one with five shots.

We reached here about 2 p.m.  This place is only about forty-five miles from A. as the crow flies, but by river it takes sixteen hours, and with various halts and delays it took us just twenty-four.  We only ran on to one mud-bank.  The effect was curious.  The ship and the port barge stopped dead though without any shock.  The starboard barge missed the mud and went on, snapping the hawsers and iron cables uniting us.  The only visible sign of the bank was an eddying of the current over it:  it was right in midstream.