A body of Kaffirs, who must have descended from the mountains before daylight, had concealed themselves in a deep sluit, or empty watercourse, running through the best pasturage, and waiting until the cattle had got between them and the hills, rushed out, and, after an ineffectual resistance from the outlying picquet of Levies, two of whom were wounded, had gone off at full gallop with the whole, which we now saw them driving in three separate herds up the grassy sides of the mountain; the ascent, however, was fortunately so steep that our horsemen had reached its foot before the Kaffirs were half way up; a very pretty skirmish took place through the bushes, and the slope was soon thickly dotted with puffs of blue smoke. The cattle were recaptured and brought in, with the exception of some dozen which had escaped into the bush. The trembling herdsmen got a reprimand, and a warning to keep nearer home in future. Many of the Hottentot women in camp seemed by no means pleased at the issue of the chase, and in fact, whenever they dared express it, their sympathies were evidently on the side of the enemy. The merry Fingoes who had borne the most conspicuous part in this little affair, as a matter of course, made it an excuse for a jollification, and after sunset their camp, some few hundred yards from ours, resounded with loud shrieks and laughter, and their quaint and striking choruses, with the thumping obligato accompaniment, rose above every other sound in the evening air. It was a constant amusement to us to visit these happy good-natured fellows when in standing camp, and see their mode of life, which is exactly like that of the Kaffir in times of peace; their extraordinary habits and customs are most interesting. On this occasion, finding a blanketed group sitting apart in a circle smoking the _dagha_ before described, I squatted down at their invitation, cross-legged, in the ring, and receiving the rude cow-horn pipe in my turn, took a pull at its capacious mouth, coughing violently at the suffocating fumes, as indeed they all did more or less, and after tasting the nasty decoction of bark which followed round in a calabash, took the politely-proffered spitting-tube of my next neighbour, signally failing, however, in the orthodox whistle, to the unbounded delight of the Fingoes, whose hearty ringing laughter was most contagious.