saw the Boers standing about it in groups
evidently excited and disturbed.

The bombardment continued much as usual in other parts, and I spent the
afternoon with the 69th Battery on Leicester Post, watching Major Wing
reply to the new howitzer on Surprise Hill. Rain fell heavily at times,
and the Boers never like firing in the wet.

The day was chiefly marked by Colonel Stoneman's visit to Intombi Camp
to inquire into the reported scandals. He thinks that the worst of the
corruption and swindling is already over, being killed by the very
scandal. But he found a general want of organisation in the distribution
of food and other stores. There are now 2,557 inhabitants of the camp,
of whom 1,015 are sick and wounded soldiers. Of late the numbers have
been increasing by forty or fifty a day, allowing for those who return
or die. The graves to-day number eighty-three, and a gang of forty
Kaffirs is always digging. Outside the military, the majority of the
refugees are Kaffirs and coolies, the white civilians only numbering
600 or 700. Colonel Stoneman had all, except the sick, paraded in
groups, and assigned separate tasks to each--nursing for the whites,
digging and sanitation for the Kaffirs, cooking and skilled labour for
the coolies. One important condition he made--every one required to work
is also required to take his day's wage. The medical authority has
objected to certain improvements on the ground of expense, but, as
Colonel Stoneman says, what will England care about a few thousands at
such a crisis in her history? Or what would she say if we allowed her
sick and wounded to die in discomfort for the want of a little money? By
to-morrow all the sick will have beds and even sheets, food will be
distributed on a better organised plan, and civilians will be raised
from a two-months' slough of feeding, sleeping, grumbling, and general
swinishness unredeemed even by shells.

[Illustration: EFFECT OF A 96LB. SHELL ON A PRIVATE HOUSE]

At night the British flashlight from Colenso was throwing signals upon
the cloudy sky, and it was amusing to watch the Boers trying to confuse
the signals by flashing their two searchlights upon the same cloud. They
have one light west of us near Bester's Station, and to-night they
showed a very brilliant electric light on the top of Bulwan. When our
signalling stopped, they turned it on the town, and very courteously
lighted me home. It was like the clearest moonlight, the shadows lon