This is a "Ration Station" (as it would be difficult to buy food privately so far from the base), therefore we don't get quite so many "allowances," but the "skoff" seems very fairly good; they bake bread in the camp; and as long as you can get decent bread you can be content.
We are just on the border of the Transvaal, and there are plenty of Boers about; two or three of our columns are trekking about in the district, and they say that we often have sick and wounded sent in from them.
Most of the sisters here seem to ride, but I can't take to that again yet. The night sisters had a little excitement two nights ago, when two horses galloped into the camp, and they—with the help of a convalescent officer—caught and tethered them. They hoped they would be allowed to keep them, but, unfortunately, they were reclaimed by some Yeomanry men; but they say that very often droves of horses pass here, and sometimes a few escape, or are left behind too sick (or too tired) to go on; and then the orderlies catch them and sell them to the sisters for £1 or £2!
I think there are about 500 beds here, nearly all under canvas. There are a few buildings of wood, and amongst them is a small room that the sisters use as a duty room, and the night sisters (two of them) sit there, and they have a small stove for boiling water, &c. There is no arrangement for hot water near the tents for the patients—we used to have (and I have seen them in other hospitals too) boilers on wheels with a coolie to keep the fire going, and if the water was not always hot, the coolie soon heard about it from the orderlies.
One day the C.O. asked me whether I had everything I wanted, and I said, "No, I wanted a good many things for the men, one being hot water"; but he said he had never heard of these movable boilers, and seemed to think them an unnecessary luxury.
At the sisters' camp we have a comfortable room that they use as a sitting-room, with a mixed lot of furniture that has been "commandeered" from houses in the district. The other day an officer sent us a lot of china plates taken from a Boer hotel; they were very welcome, as we were most of us using enamel plates out of our tea-baskets, &c. We have our meals in a tent—just a long table, and benches without backs.
Our sleeping tents are chiefly the big square kind, called E. P. tents; they are supposed to hold four beds, so we may have to pack tight, but at present Sister and I are alone. Some of the sisters have made their tents very nice, and have rigged up curtains to divide them. At present we use our boxes as washstand, &c., and as a General Hospital is given a certain amount of furniture for the sisters, we intend not to buy anything that is not really necessary until we see what they are going to give us.