the hill I looked down upon
one of Bester's farms. The owner-a Boer traitor-was now in safe keeping.
A few days ago his family drove off in a waggon for the Free State.
White were their parasols and in front they waved a Red Cross flag. On a
gooseberry bush in the midst of the farm they also left a white flag,
where it still flew to protect a few fat pigs, turkeys, and other fowl.
The white flag is becoming a kind of fetish. To-day all our white tents
were smeared with reddish mud to make them less visible. Beyond Range
Post the enemy set up a new gun commanding the Maritzburg road as it
crossed that point of hill. The Irish Fusiliers who held that position
were shelled heavily, but without loss.

_November 23, 1899._

The schoolmaster's wife had a fine escape. She was asleep in her bedroom
when a 45lb. shell came through the fireplace and burst towards the
bed. The room was smashed to pieces, but she was only cut about the
head, one splinter driving in the bone, but not making a very serious
wound. Two days before she had given a soldier 10s. for a fragment. Now
she had a whole shell for nothing. At five o'clock "Long Tom" threw
seven of his 96lb. shells straight down the street in quick succession,
smashing a few shops and killing some mules and cattle, but without
further harm. We watched them from the top of the road. They came
shrieking over our heads, and then a flare of fire and a cloud of dust
and stones showed where they fell. At every explosion the women and
children laughed and cheered with delight, as at the Crystal Palace
fireworks.

Both yesterday and to-day the Boers on Bulwan spent much time and money
shelling a new battery which Colonel Knox has had made beside the river
near the racecourse. It is just in the middle of the flat, and the enemy
can see its six embrasures and the six guns projecting from them. The
queer thing is that these guns never reply, and under the hottest fire
their gunners neither die nor surrender. A better battery was never
built of canvas and stick on the stage of Drury. It has cost the
simple-hearted Boers something like L300 in wasted shell.

All day waggons were reported coming down from the Free State and moving
south. They were said to carry the wives and daughters of the Free
Staters driven by Buller from their own country and content to settle in
ours, now that they had conquered it. A queer situation, unparalleled in
war, as far as I know.

In the evening I