plied at all.

The milk question was the most serious of the day. I saw a herd of
thirty-five cows which had only yielded sixteen pints at milking time.
It is now debated whether we shall not have to feed the cows and starve
the horses; or kill the thinnest horses and stew them down into broth
for the others. The reports about the condition of Intombi Camp were
particularly horrible to-day. But General Hunter will not allow any one
to visit the camp, and it is no good repeating secondhand reports.

_December 27, 1899._

The side of Tunnel Hill, at the angle of the Helpmakaar road, where
Liverpools and Gloucesters have suffered in turn, was to-day the scene
of an exactly similar disaster to the Devons.

The great Bulwan gun began shelling us later than usual. It must have
been past eight. The Devon officers had long finished breakfast, and
after inspecting the lines were gathered for orderly room in their mess.
It is a fairly large shed on a platform of beaten earth, levelled in the
side of the hill. The roof, of corrugated iron and earth, covered with
tarpaulin, would hardly even keep out splinters, and is only supported
on rough wooden beams. It is impossible to construct sufficient head
shelter. The ground is so rocky that all you can do with it is to build
walls and traverses. Along one side of the mess tent a great traverse
runs, some eight or ten feet thick, and about as high. When the sentry
blows the warning whistle at the flash of a big gun, officers are
supposed to come under the shelter of this traverse, till the shell has
passed or declared its direction. At the first shot this morning I heard
no whistle blow, but it was sounded at the second and third. It was the
third that did the damage. Striking the top of the traverse, it plunged
forward in huge fragments into the messroom, tearing an enormous hole in
the tarpaulin screen. Unhappily Mr. Dalzell, a first lieutenant with
eight years' service, had refused to come under the wall, and was
sitting at the table reading. The main part of the shell struck him full
on the side of the face, and carried away nearly all his head. He passed
painlessly from his reading into death. The state of the messroom when I
saw it was too horrible to describe. The wounds of the other officers
prove that the best traverse is insufficient unless accompanied by head
shelter. Though their backs were against the wall, seven were wounded,
and three others badly bruised. Two c