Assuming that the contents of Colonel Crealock’s letter were of a private character, I was none the less for that journey an official courier. What was inside the envelope was immaterial; the outside was rigorously official. The F.O. bag carried by a Queen’s messenger is every whit as official when its contents are old lace and ball slippers as when they consist of despatches on whose terms hang peace or war. Again, I knew that Colonel Crealock’s alleged statement must be untrue that his enclosure consisted of a “few words” and no “document of a public character.” I had carried down nothing save his packet and my own written description of the battle. The telegraph official permitted me, as soon as I arrived, to despatch the few lines which reached Sir Garnet Wolseley and Sir Bartle Frere. He then was occupied for several hours in telegraphing the contents of Colonel Crealock’s envelope, which, as he explained, had precedence as being official matter; and it was not until after the “many hundred words” (those were his words) to which his matter extended had been sent off, that my descriptive message was put on the wires. It is not easy to imagine that a man can honestly confuse between a short domestic telegram and a public message many hundred words long. Be this as it may, there was no difficulty in finding unchallengeable evidence of the untruthfulness of the statements attributed to Colonel Crealock in the above letter. At Aldershot I found the R.E. officer who had been in charge of the field telegraph office at Landmann’s Drift when I arrived there on July 5, and the operator who had despatched the contents of the official envelope of which I was the bearer from Ulundi. The records had been mutilated, so that documentary evidence was lacking; but the parole evidence of the officer and of the operator given in the former’s hearing and mine, was conclusive. I begged Lieutenant Jones to put into writing his recollection of the circumstances, and the following is his letter:-- I perfectly well remember seeing you arrive at Landmann’s Drift on the afternoon of July 5, 1879. You brought with you, to my certain recollection, a mass of written matter, of what description I cannot quite remember, but I am sure that, whatever it was, it took precedence of your own telegram to your paper, which proves that it was what we call “service messages”--that is, on military service. This the telegrapher at Landmann’s Drift also remembers well, as also the telegrapher at the transmitting station at Quagga’s Kraal. The entire bulk of the messages you brought amounted to nearly 4000 words, of which not more than 1200 were your own press message, which did not go till late in the night. I regret to say the abstract books are lost or destroyed, so that I cannot quote from that evidence. My memory, however, is so clear that I am quite certain to the extent I have mentioned.