weeping Observation Hill. Our foes apparently had got an engine on the
railway between Surprise Hill and Thornton's Kop with an electric light
attached to it. They are evidently prepared to bring against us all the
scientific appliances of modern warfare. Two hours later artillery and
rifle fire began, and continued for nearly an hour, but apparently
nobody was any the worse for it.

_November 21._--The cannonade begins again at daybreak with some shots
at our scouts, who are trying to feel their way out through the scrub
between Bulwaan and Lombard's Kop. The Boers have mounted a 40-pounder
high-velocity gun on the spur of the latter, and give us a taste of its
quality by throwing several shells into the Fusilier camp at Range Post
and bursting shrapnel over the town. The bombardment finishes about dusk
with some vicious shots from Bulwaan. After this we sit and watch the
lightning which plays in forks and zig-zags and chains about the hills
between us and Tugela River. For such picturesque effects there is a
great advantage in being encamped on a height, so that the whole
panorama of rugged kopjes, deep ravines where spruits or rivers sing,
silent camp, and sleeping town stretches round one, bounded only by an
amphitheatre of higher hills.

_November 22._--From half-past eleven last night there was heavy
musketry fire near the north-eastern line of our defensive works, and we
thought the Devons were being attacked hotly, but it turned out to be
nothing more than a fusilade from Boer rifles at some unknown objects.
Our foes are evidently getting a little jumpy and apprehensive of a
surprise by night. Sir George White sends out later a flag of truce to
protest against the persistent shelling of the Town Hall, where our sick
and wounded are lodged temporarily under the protection of a Red Cross
flag. Commandant Schalk-Burger is said to have replied somewhat
insolently that he understands the Geneva flag is being used by us to
shelter combatants. At any rate Intombi is the place for our sick and
wounded, and he will not respect any other hospital flag. Curiously
enough we accept this humiliation, so far as to remove the patients and
provide for them a camping-ground where the tents cannot be seen; but
the Red Cross flag still flies on the Town Hall. Again we watch the
beautiful effects of almost continuous lightning, brilliant as
moonlight, and then turn in before black clouds break in a terrific
thunderstorm. I have rem