Immediately below the fort was a glorious orchard, full of peach, nectarine, apricot, fig, plum, and pomegranate trees, the branches literally weighed down with the glowing load of ripe fruit, which almost as thickly strewed the grass beneath. In our constant patrols, at every Dutch Laager and ruined farm that we came upon for miles round, we found the same; and as the Boers at the former were most pressing, and the owners of the latter had abandoned them, we everywhere got as much fruit as we could conveniently eat, and the men were, many of them, expiating their over indulgence by diarrhoea. The ripe fields of corn, sown in hopes of a peaceful harvest, waved uncut in many of the more distant valleys, but nearer to the post, the English Burghers and Dutch Boers mutually assisted in the harvest, working with their ammunition pouches on, and guns and arms within reach. To aid these half-ruined farmers, Bruce allowed about twenty of the soldiers to assist in reaping until all was secured, and our men worked most willingly all day in the heat of the sun, afterwards volunteering to help a poor old fellow who, unable to give his labour in return, was not helped by his neighbours; reaping and getting in his corn for him, as well as the produce of his little garden. Poor old Hayes had seen better and brighter times, had come out to the country with considerable means, and commenced farming with great energy on a large scale, but he had met with a series of reverses, and the total destruction of his property by the Kaffirs, at the commencement of the present war, which completed his ruin, had affected his mind. He lived at the foot of the walls in a small Kaffir hut; but in spite of his rags and poverty, he carefully treasured up a memento of bygone prosperous days,--in a small box he still preserved his old scarlet hunting-coat. Too proud to the last to accept charity, the only way in which we could relieve him was by purchasing our vegetables from him at a liberal price. Shortly after this, his hut one night caught fire and was burned to the ground before any water could be got; he looked on in utter helplessness, as if overwhelmed by this crowning disaster. When the roaring blaze was over, and nothing remained but a heap of smouldering ashes, he was gone, and we all supposed had been taken by some of his neighbours to their dwellings for the night. In the morning he was found in his little garden, lying on his face, cold and dead. To a Peace Congress, or an Aborigines Protection Society, such a history would suggest itself as a special retributive Providence on the unjust aggressor; for to such philanthropists the real object of sympathy would of course be the gentle Kaffir and the oppressed Hottentot. Still, it is unhappily but one out of many a colonist's history, not the less sad because unknown.