rench steamer had
just arrived with troops who had no time to disembark, and she has
turned tail and gone after the others.

_May 23rd._--1.15 p.m. Am sitting near the top of "The Gully". This
runs north and south on the west side of the peninsula. I am at a spot
slightly north of Krithia, and in the very middle of our firing line.
All the tops of The Gully, on both sides and along its ramifications,
are lined with our men and all are blazing away at the hardest, while
the Turks bullets keep up a constant whizz over our heads. The
Worcesters have just gone into the trenches to relieve some other
unit. One of the Hants men I have been sitting beside and talking to
was in our hold on the "River Clyde" when we landed exactly four weeks
ago. He tells me how gloomy his battalion was over the death of their
C.O. that day--Colonel Smith-Carrington, "a grand fellow, the best man
that ever lived," as he put it.

Wearying to death after twelve days of idleness I set off after church
parade to visit the Hants Dressing Station where I knew Pirie was
placed. I went along the Krithia road till I came to The Gully I once
reached late one evening, when Thomson and I were sniped at. Here I
chanced to meet my old cabin companion, Balfour, who directed me to
the very top of The Gully where I came across a battery which again
directed me further to the left. Here three bullets flew past me, a
gunner saying these stray bullets were doing a great deal of damage.
Balfour also told me that they had lost two men yesterday from the
same cause.

At last I reached The Gully which is several miles long--over
three--and averages 100 yards in width at the top. All the slopes are
one solid mass of shrubbery--laurel, juniper, dwarf conifers, holly
oak, and brilliant flowers innumerable. I brought back a bunch of
Cytisus whose individual flowers might have been our broom (_C.
Scoparius_).

A road has been made the whole length of The Gully, and the whole way
is occupied by our troops, especially Indians, many of whom were
engaged in their ablutions as I passed. The sides of The Gully would
average 100 feet in height, many parts being higher. The sides slope
steeply in parts, in many places are quite perpendicular or
over-hanging, the walls being the usual hard, marly clay, while I
noticed broad layers of conglomerate and sandstone also occur. I was
charmed with the whole place, and when describing it at the mess I was
thought to be romancing. Th