I was just in the act of mounting my horse in good spirits to ride
off and see my guns brought down over Elandslaagte Kop, when something
startled him and he bolted over the rocks near the camp; having only
one foot in the stirrup I overbalanced and came heavily on my head and
left shoulder and was knocked silly for twenty minutes with a gash
over my eye to the bone. I was carried to my tent and kindly stitched
up by Dr. Campbell of the Imperial Light Infantry, and being much
shaken I was obliged to hand over command of my guns to poor Steel
who was only just recovering from jaundice and had to trek off at 3
p.m. to Sunday's River Drift. By keeping very quiet in the 4.7 camp in
Hunt's tent I got over my fall better than I expected, and was able to
move on, with a bandaged head and a sore body, with the 4.7 Battery
when they marched at daybreak on the 17th to Waschbank Bridge which we
reached at about 11 p.m. after a very hot and dusty march--all done up
and cross, and self in addition bandaged up and feeling altogether
unlovely after a slow and horribly dusty ride of eighteen miles. The
position of affairs now seems to be this: General Buller with Clery's
Division (the 2nd) and the Cavalry have occupied Beith and moved on
Dundee from which the Boers fled on the 14th with 4,000 men and
eighteen guns. Thus, Buller is in Dundee; Lyttelton's Division (the
4th) is still near Ladysmith under orders to advance; and we (the 5th)
are to move to Glencoe with all speed up Glencoe Pass and along the
railway line route.

_Friday, 18th May._--At 7 a.m. we trekked under General Hildyard and
had a very trying march with dust, dust, dust, sometimes a foot thick,
till arriving half-way to Glencoe we outspanned oxen. We found all the
railway bridges and the culverts of the line, some twenty-eight all
told, blown up along our line of march. The Boer positions we passed
on the road were extraordinarily strong, as usual; and one can well
understand why they held on to this place and the Biggarsberg ranges
on each side, a position ten times stronger than any Colenso. We
reached Glencoe about 5 p.m., and marching through it bivouacked for
the night a mile beyond the town on the level uplands. Here we
received orders to advance with all speed to Newcastle, where the
Commander-in-Chief is with the 2nd Division; so on we moved by
moonlight in a cloud of dust and passed the night on an awful rocky
place at Hatton's Spruit, trekking on in the morn