For some days we made patrols in different directions round the country, constantly meeting with a magnificent pair of secretary birds, which appeared to move in a circle of about a mile radius from the post, and became like familiar friends. We visited the remaining two of the inhabited houses, the inmates of which we found in a state of barricade and constant alarm, guns loaded and capped standing in the corners of the rooms, and the labourers working close to the house with their roers by their sides; and one day made an excursion with a waggon to a ruined school-house, in a lonely position at the foot of a lofty mountain, from which we took the liberty of borrowing the forms and tables for our unfurnished lodgings in the Fort. Nothing could be more desolate and melancholy than the deserted building; the doors creaked in the wind, swallows and grey spreuwe had built their nests in every corner of the schoolroom, forlorn spelling books and catechisms lay strewed about the ground, imprinted with the footsteps of wolves and jackals, and the broken windows were darkened by a rank growth of jungle and weeds. One day soon after this, as we were returning from covering the descent of a mounted patrol into the Kat River valley, getting occasional shots as we wound along a Kaffir path, round a higher ridge of the Didama, at Oribee and Rheebok, two Kaffirs were detected peeping over the tops of some detached rocks, which lay on the smooth green slope of the mountain side; we galloped in a few seconds across the short intervening space, but quick as we were they had disappeared in the most mysterious manner, and nothing was to be seen of them beyond a few foot-prints, which could not be traced, and three horses, of which we made prizes. While wondering whether they had sunk into the earth or vanished in air, several distant shots fired in quick succession, attracted our attention to a hill about a mile off, behind the fort, and on bringing our glasses to bear on the distant puffs of white smoke, we were astonished to perceive a large body of Kaffirs, mounted and on foot, engaged with our outlying picquet, and a few Burghers. Away we went full "tripple" down the mountain side, at the risk of rolling head over heels to the bottom, dashed across the small stream at a flying leap, and spurred up the steep banks to the post, where we found the "alarm" signal flag flying, the gates locked, and the troops under arms. While Bruce brought on the infantry at the double, Hedley and I galloped up the hill and joined the Burghers, who, vastly outnumbered, were getting the worst of it, and retiring slowly before the enemy, who could not have been less than 300 at the very lowest computation, a third of them mounted. About 200 of their force pressed on the right of our little line of some two and twenty, while the remainder hovered round the left, and our only wonder at the moment was that they did not close upon us and annihilate the whole, which