OUR VOLUNTEERS.

Gisborne Times, Volume V, Issue 133, 15 June 1901, Page 2

OUR VOLUNTEERS.

A ROUGH TRIP. DISGRACEFUL STATE OF AFFAIRS (Special to Times.) ’ Wellington, last night.

The volunteers from Gisborne have been getting a rough timo on their trip South, and the parents of tho cadets have good reason to feel pleased that the lads did not leave Gisborne by Wednesday evening’s steamer. The men arrived at midnight last night. I am informed—though I cannot yet state it positively until I have made further enquiry—that tho horses had neither feed nor drink from the timo they were entrained at Napier at 10 in the morning until their arrival in Wellington. There was no covering to the trucks which contained the horses, and as it snowed for a portion of the way, and some of the horses were clipped, they suffered considerably.

On arrival the mounted men had to wait in the rain for about two hours, and eventually, when they reached the camp at Newtown Park, they found that their miserable experience was not at an end. The camp was in a quagmire from the heavy rain of yesterday. Tho Rifles marched off at once, but they were as badly off as the mounted men, as they had to march four miles in the wet and cold.

I understand that arrangements aro being made to barrack the Rifles in one of the schoolrooms, while the Mounteds are also having provision made for them. It is a Godsend that the cadets did not come on the same day, as their sufferings from the wet and cold would havo been acute. There is splendid weather to-day.