Sir Garnet Wolseley was experiencing his first winter in Cyprus:
The days are now so cool when there are clouds about that one may play lawn-tennis all day. The nights are cold and the early mornings extremely cold. I get up about 5.00a.m. or five thirty a.m. and write by camp light and my fingers are sometimes so cold that I have a great difficulty in writing. A most incomprehensible telegram from Layard forwarded to me by Lord Salisbury on the subject of the land question here. English post arrived in camp about 6.00 a.m. A rather more civil letter from Lord S. than usual, saying that Stanley and Smith were full of praise at the energetic manner in which Government was being carried on here.