We continued our way up, the track if anything growing steeper, till we reached the highest point of the camp, and found ourselves before a pretty cottage with creepers climbing about it belonging to the major in command. A few yards off was the officers' mess room. They expected us. They knew my companion, and visitors from the under-world were naturally welcome. The major was an active clever man, with a bright laughing Irish wife, whose relations in the old country were friends of my own. The American consul and his lady happened to have ridden up also the same day; so, in spite of fog, which grew thicker every moment, we had a good time. As to seeing, we could see nothing; but then there was nothing to see except views; and panoramic views from mountain tops, extolled as they may be, do not particularly interest me. The officers, so far as I could learn, are less ill off than the privates. Those who are married have their wives with them; they can read, they can draw, they can ride; they have gardens about their houses where they can grow English flowers and vegetables and try experiments. Science can be followed anywhere, and is everywhere a resource. Major ----told me that he had never known what it was to find the day too long. Healthy the camp is at any rate. The temperature never rises above 70° nor sinks often below 60°. They require charcoal fires to keep the damp out and blankets to sleep under; and when they see the sun it is an agreeable change and something to talk about. There are no large incidents, but small ones do instead. While I was there a man came to report that he had slipped by accident and set a stone rolling; the stone had cut a water pipe in two, and it had to be mended, and was an afternoon's work for somebody. Such officers as have no resources in themselves are, of course, bored to extinction. There is neither furred game to hunt nor feathered game to shoot; the mongoose has eaten up the partridges. I suggested that they should import two or three couple of bears from Norway; they would fatten and multiply among the roots and sugar canes, with a black piccaninny now and then for a special delicacy. One of the party extemporised us a speech which would be made on the occasion in Exeter Hall.