The waggons had brought our tents, which we had now been without for nearly three weeks, and the camp was pitched with the greatest alacrity, and in half the usual time. Markers were placed and "covered," their bayonets stuck in the ground, streets marked out, and tents brought from the waggons; in a moment there was a hammering of pegs on every side, the tents were stretched out on the ground of each line or company, and at the sound of two notes on the bugle the whole rose up in their places; what had seemed confusion became the most exact order, and the bare plain was suddenly transformed into a canvas city, the whole being completed in less time than it took the wood and water parties to bring fuel from the neighbouring bush, or fill the camp-kettles at the river. Heavy rain again came on in the evening with every prospect of a steady continuance, and, though in tents, we were now quite indifferent to it ourselves, we could not but pity the poor fellows on the heights, exposed to the full violence of the storm. We were in for another "three days rain." The enemy having entirely abandoned the position, Colonel Michell's Brigade marched down into the Blinkwater during the afternoon of the 31st; they had seen the spoor of Kaffirs and cattle trekking out of the district, and had taken some Kaffir women prisoners, who stated that there were only a very few of their people still lurking in the bush, looking after the wounded whom they were unable to remove, and had secreted in their undiscoverable and inaccessible retreats in the twenty square miles of forest that clothe this rugged range of mountains. Some rebel Hottentot women had also been captured, who represented themselves as wandering lambs of the scattered flock of a Mr. Reid, of the Kat River London Missionary settlement. They were very dirty--disgustingly so--and were barely covered by their filthy rags; they were set at liberty, and advised to leave that part of the country as soon as possible. Several horses had been taken by this brigade, and amongst them we recognised that of our lamented Band-master, taken on the 8th of September, whose coat was also found in one of the huts. The gallant brigade, literally in rags, marched steadily through our camp for Fort Beaufort in the storm of wind and rain, many with bare feet, and their thin and scanty clothes, so tattered as to be hardly decent. They had suffered very much in their exposed position, diarrhoea and dysentery having laid up whole sections. For the next three days the rain never ceased for one minute, and the ground became so thoroughly saturated that the floors of our tents were as wet as the flooded plain outside. The wet trembling horses, with drawn-up bellies, and the damp soldiers, with turned-up trews, splashing about amongst the long rows of soaked canvas, looked nearly as wretched as the shivering blanket-covered Fingoes that crouched round the smoky fires.