in
the cage I am having made for it and leave it _en route_ down at
Maritzburg.

_Saturday, 20th October._--Anniversary of Talana Hill. Sir Redvers
Buller arrived to-day in Durban and had a great reception. All the
newspapers praise him, and the earlier and difficult days of our
rebuffs on the Tugela are wiped out in public opinion by subsequent
brilliant successes. The General is, indeed, immensely popular with
the army he has led through such difficult country and through so much
fighting and marching. Very pleased to meet at Volksrust to-day
Captain Fitz Herbert of the South African Light Horse who came out
with me in the _Briton_ a year ago. He was originally in the Berkshire
Regiment, but joined the South African Light Horse at Capetown and
was taken prisoner by the Boers at Colenso. His experiences with the
Boers for four months as a prisoner were, he tells me, somewhat awful.
The first week he was handcuffed and put in the common jail for
knocking down an insolent jailer, and he had to live all his time on
mealies, with meat only once a week. He shows the marks of all this
and is quite grey.

_Sunday, 21st October._--A wire at last ordering us to leave on
Wednesday for Durban. Off I went, therefore, to Volksrust to close my
ordnance accounts with my middy, Mr. Ledgard, from Paardekop, who had
met me with his papers. Hard at it since the 15th, turning over
stores, making out vouchers, answering wires, and writing reports.

_Tuesday, 23rd October._--I gave over my guns here and at Paardekop on
Sunday to Lieutenant Campbell and Captain Shepheard, of the Royal
Artillery, and to-day we are all busy packing, and doing the thousand
and one things one always finds at the last moment to do. As we are
off at 7 a.m. to-morrow, to catch the mail train at Sandspruit, the
Queen's are giving me a farewell dinner to-night, while Bethune's
Horse are dining my men. Rundle, French, and Hildyard are reported to
be closing in all round in a circle (this place being the centre), and
5,000 Boers within the circle are being gradually forced slowly in
towards us. The many men who come in to surrender report that the main
body will be obliged either to surrender or to attack us somewhere to
get a position. I wired yesterday to General Hildyard, who is at Blood
River, sending my respects to him and his Staff on leaving his
command, and I received a very kind reply to-day: "I and my Staff
thank you for your message. I am very sorry not