out of our own pockets, we were only too glad to recover. The dead ox was quickly skinned and cut up by the Fingoes, who, finding to their surprise I did not want it for my own use, regarded the affair from that moment as a great lark, and sat up all night eating beef. To ourselves the result was not so satisfactory, having subsequently to pay £70 for the oxen. After accomplishing the ascent of the Blinkwater Pass, which we had hoped not to have seen again for some time, we, late the next day, came in sight of the little fort, which in the setting sun, with its background of green and purple mountains, distinctly defined against the clear sky, looked now as bright and cheerful as it had loomed dark and gloomy on our former melancholy visit. Our approach caused an evident commotion in the little garrison, to whom our coming, and their consequent "relief," were entirely unknown. About 800 yards from the post, a quantity of old trampled wheat-straw was pointed out to us, scattered along the roadside, where it had been left by the enemy, since the 6th of February, on which day they had thrashed out a whole stack in sight of the fort, at that time occupied by the Burghers and Dutch, with their families and herds. A party of about 700 or 800 Kaffirs and Hottentots, who had first attacked the post, took possession of the little water-mill out of musket shot from the walls, and their women, to the number of about 150, coolly commenced thrashing out the corn, which they took away with them in a waggon, while the men from the cover of the rocks and some old quarries, kept up a constant fire on the fort, the interior of which from its absurd position, was entirely commanded and raked from a hill within half musket range, so that no one dare move across the yard, or show himself within the walls. The besieged inmates were almost entirely without food or water, having hurriedly taken refuge from their adjacent farms on the first alarm. Three days afterwards, relief arrived; Commander Bowker, with 250 men, fell upon the enemy in rear, and drove them off after a fight of three hours. The walls and gates showed innumerable bullet marks, thickest round the windows and loop-holes, and in many the balls still sticking in the woodwork. Post Retief was formerly a farm house (parts of which are still remaining, and built into the present walls of the fort) belonging to Piet Retief, a distinguished Field Cornet of the Winterberg district, who, while in treaty with Dingan, king of the Zulus, for a grant of territory, near Natal, for the settlement of the Dutch Border colonists, of whom he was Governor and Commander-in-chief, was barbarously murdered with his companions, by that prince, in the beginning of 1838, and while actually partaking of his treacherous hospitality.