Pinetown, Natal,
September 1900.

I will just finish telling you of my travels while they are fresh in my memory, and then this letter can wait till there is enough material to fill it up.

I was very sorry to hear from my friend on the ambulance of the death of Sir William Stokes (physician); he was ill only four days, and it seems only the other day he came round this hospital and was so cheery and bright, and I know he was meaning to say a good deal to the Hospital Commission in favour of the hospitals out here, and of the work they have done.

I just had dinner with my friends at the Royal, and then the 'bus took me to the station with my heavy bag of shells, &c., in time for the 7.40 P.M. train back to Colenso. I was awfully tired, but the mosquitoes were bad, and did not let me have much sleep.

The next day I was invited to go with a picnic party to the Tugela Falls. A large ox waggon was loaded up with children, provisions, &c., and I went with some more people in an Army Service Corps Scotch cart, with no springs, drawn by four mules, who frequently ran away, and who seemed to have a rooted objection to keeping to the road (or rather track); so the journey was rather perilous and distinctly painful.

We passed Fort Wylie, and saw where all the fighting took place on Pieter's Hill, and we saw the rough bridge that the Boers had made over the Tugela by simply pulling up our rails with the sleepers attached and throwing them into the river.

We had lunch close by the Falls—even after this very dry season it is quite a big fall—and after lunch we climbed the hills around, including Hart's Hill. On the top of this hill is a big memorial stone to Colonel Thackery, several more officers, and sixty-seven men of the 27th Inniskillings, who fell up there, and we also saw their grave (fenced in) at the foot of the hill.

By the time that we got down to the line again it was blowing a gale, and such dust, so some of us sheltered in a platelayer's cottage.

He had a fine collection of shells and other relics; his cottage had been used by the Boers as a telegraph station, and we found he had been in the smash-up of the armoured train, when Winston Churchill was taken prisoner.

As Mrs. D. had her baby with her, and it was now a really bad dust-storm, this man kindly stopped a goods train with his red flag, and we returned comfortably to Colenso in the guard's van.

I should much like to have had longer stay both at Colenso and Ladysmith, there was so much of interest both in the places and in the people one met; but I wanted to visit a few places on the way down, so I left Colenso the next morning at 9.30. My first stop was at Chieveley, where there had been a big hospital, but all that remains now is a little closed-in graveyard, with nearly two hundred graves; many died from wounds, but many more from enteric. They had a clever way of marking the graves, each man's name, regiment, &c., being written on a slip of paper and enclosed in a medicine bottle and securely stuck into the mound.

I saw poor Lieutenant Roberts' grave (it has a plain stone with an inscription, but I hear a cross is being sent out); they had brought him from Colenso on the ambulance train the evening of the day he was wounded. The station-master told me he had helped to lift him out of the train, and he seemed sensible and comfortable then, but he died the same night.

I saw a very fine redoubt at Chieveley made by the Royal Engineers, but it was never used. I took the next train on to Mooi River. Before we reached Frere station we passed the place of the armoured train disaster, and the graves of the Royal Dublin Fusiliers who fell there. Wherever you go there seem to be graves dotted about, most of them enclosed with barbed wire, and some with a cross set up, or the man's initials marked out in empty cartridge-cases.

There is a large hospital at Estcourt, but I had only time for a hasty lunch at the station there, as I wanted to have an hour or two at Mooi River, to see the hospital, where I knew one of the doctors, and where it seemed probable that we should be sent when we first arrived; on the whole, I am glad we were not stationed there, though they have had more interesting surgical work than we have.

Unfortunately my friend was away, but the superintendent kindly showed me round, and I had tea in the sisters' mess.

They have 950 beds, nearly all under canvas. It was blowing hard, and while I was there it began to rain, and it was snowing on the Drakensberg, and very cold, so every one looked rather miserable. It is a desolate place on the bare veldt.

I left again on a goods train at 4.30, and rattled down to Maritzburg by 9 P.M., where I meant to stay the night.

Miss —— kindly met me at the station, and we drove down to her house in a riksha; she has been taking in convalescent nurses, and feeding them and giving them a rest. She has had much anxiety about her brothers, one of whom was commandeered and had to fight for the Boers, together with his son (a boy of sixteen). They were with Cronje at Paardeberg, and are now prisoners at St. Helena; another brother was fighting for us, and was taken prisoner by the Boers, but released when we took Pretoria.

Miss —— wanted me to go out to Howick to see the falls there, and to have a look at the big convalescent camp, where they have 1600 beds; but the train left half-an-hour earlier than she thought, so I missed it, and instead she took me to see the Maritzburg Hospitals, Fort Napier, Grey's Hospital (now civilian again), and the Garrison Church, the last the most comfortable looking hospital I have seen further up-country than this one, but it was a little strange to see the men in their hospital suits lounging and smoking on the church steps.

I met a sister whom I had known in London. She was excited about playing in a cricket match; and as she and all the eleven sisters had been given a week's leave from duty to practise for this cricket match, they are evidently as slack in the way of work as we are.

I had some nice greetings from some old patients of ours, now on duty in Maritzburg.

I left there about 6 P.M., had dinner at Inchanga with a Daily News correspondent, and got back here about 9.30 P.M. Some orderlies were at the station and kindly carried up my load of curios, &c.

The two medical officers had got back the night before, and though they went as far up as Newcastle they had not seen as much as I had, and regretted that they had not had my offer of a convalescent horse at Ladysmith!

I have seen a good many hospitals, and met a good many sisters, and I have gathered a few hints of little ways in which we might improve this hospital; but, though "I says it as shouldn't," I don't think there is any hospital up this side where the men are more comfortable and happy, and I think the sisters here are better fed and their mess bills are no higher than at any of the hospitals—indeed, lower than most of them.

I was glad to find that they had had a peaceful time while I was away, and no difficulties; and as there are actually only eighteen men and ten officers in, we are still very slack; we expect some more any day now, but there is very little sickness just at present.

You ask about the men and their letters; it was rather difficult when we were so frightfully busy at first to do all that one would have liked, but we always try to write for the men who are too ill to write for themselves, and I always saw that all the men who wished had writing materials, and they used to help each other.

They say at some of the base hospitals stray lady visitors have been such a nuisance in interfering with the nurses, but I could well and safely have employed a few stray ladies in amusing the men, writing their letters for them, &c. The friends of those officers who were dangerously ill were all written to by each mail.

Now that we are slack, of course, I have much more chance of talking to the men, and they tell me many tales of the fighting, and of the rough time they have had at the front; but you will hear plenty of that from the men who have gone home.

I am beginning to have many grateful letters from our patients' friends at home.

There has been some delay about our pay lately, and some of the sisters who were lodging here had not received any since they left England, so were not able to pay their mess bills, and I had to pay various mess accounts when I got back from my run up-country, and began to feel rather anxious as to whether I could go on feeding my large party of sisters; but now the pay has turned up, so we have got straight again; and the Government give us various allowances—Colonial allowance, and for mess, servants, fuel, &c., so we are feeling rather well off.

We are much enjoying a big package of papers that the Red Cross Society now send up to us each week; whole weeks of Times, Daily Mail, Daily Graphic, Daily Telegraph, Standard, Illustrated London News, Army and Navy, &c. They are the greatest boon to the whole camp.

The men point out to me the "pretty boys" in the illustrated papers when they see any pictures of soldiers, as, by comparison, they all look so thin and rough out here.