"Well," he continued, "the first English army which invaded Zululand, when Dingaan was at the zenith of his power, consisted of 18 Englishmen, perhaps half-a-dozen Dutchmen, 30 Hottentots and about 3000 Natal Kafirs, and they had only 400 old M.L. muskets to the whole outfit." "Oh, come," said I; "you're trying to pull my leg." "Devil a bit," said he. Then he spun me the following yarn, which anyone may verify by perusing the late Mr D. C. F. Moodie's book, "The History of the Battles and Adventures of the British, the Boers and the Zulus in South Africa," from which volume I have not only refreshed my memory, but have cribbed many paragraphs, which I shall quote during my narration, as I consider the whole story to be so incredible that it requires the evidence of an historian who, although not present himself at the battle, was yet alive at that time and who both knew and conversed with the survivors of the invasion. After the raid made by Dingaan on Port Natal, in 1838, two Englishmen, named John Cane and Robert Biggar, together with a few other British adventurers smarting under the losses they had sustained, determined to retrieve them and avenge their injured feeling by making a raid into Zululand, for which purpose they mustered 18 Britishers, 5 or 6 Dutchmen, 30 Hottentots who were first-class, up-to-date fighting men and less than 3000 Kafirs. The number of fire-arms this motley outfit possessed was 400 old-fashioned muskets, which number included a few rifles and sporting guns of that epoch, the great majority of the Kafirs carrying only their shields and assegais, and this expeditionary force they called the Grand Army of Natal. Thus equipped, these daring Lost Legionaries crossed the Tugela in February 1839, and entered a mountainous broken country, where one of the most bloodthirsty despots that Providence ever allowed to exist awaited them, with an army of over 50,000 highly trained warriors who had never before been beaten. Long odds, my gentle reader? Yes; too long odds even for a bellicose Irishman wid his back teeth awash wid the crater. Still, they did it, and now I am going to quote Moodie.