After having descended the side of a steep rocky mountain where it was necessary to alight and lead our horses, I was in the act of remounting, when my horse suddenly started off at a gallop, and taking the bit in his mouth, left me at his mercy, with one foot in the stirrup and a loaded rifle in my hand. The saddle being loose, turned round, and after a short but mad career, down we came on the stones with a crash that made the sparks fly from my eyes; the next moment I found myself in the centre of a ring of kind-hearted Boers, eager to render me assistance; one trying to mend my favourite rifle, which was smashed to pieces, others offering water, and two or three feeling me all over, to ascertain whether any bones were broken. Happily I had not sustained any serious injury, though sufficiently severe to render me very unequal to the exertion of riding thirty miles further in the sun, over a country becoming at every step more rugged and difficult. Sometimes we had to cross roaring drifts of the Koonap with slippery shelving rocks, that frequently launched horse and rider into deep eddying pools; or, bent double on the saddle-bows, pushed our way through thorny thickets of _vacht um bidtge_,[20] prickly-pear, and mimosa, occasionally creeping round some precipitous scaur, by a narrow and crumbling track, where a false step of our nimble and active steeds would have hurled us into the river beneath. The sun was so hot, that my leg and thigh, from which the trews had been completely torn, became blistered by its burning rays, and continued very painful for many days after. At Viljoens farm, we surprised a small party of Kaffirs robbing and destroying. A brisk scrimmage took place; three or four of them were killed, and some women captured, whom we liberated after getting all the information we could out of them, which was, as usual, very little. Never had the sight of the little fort been more welcome than on that sultry evening, after sixteen hours patrolling over more than fifty miles of broken country, and the last thirty miles of it in great pain. I did not leave my bed for many days; the heat of the weather, and the peculiar tendency of the atmosphere to aggravate every wound, however trivial, rendering mine both tedious and troublesome. A few days after our return, some little excitement was caused in our isolated community, by the report of a mounted party approaching through the glen. It proved to be a patrol from the Blinkwater camp, which, having fallen in with the enemy, and captured twelve horses, and killing also sundry Kaffirs without any casualty on their own side, had been prevented returning by the timely and fortunate discovery that their pass was "forelaid" by a very strong body of the enemy; consequently they had made for our post, which they reached safely with all their booty, completely outwitting the cunning savages.