For the next week or ten days we were out almost daily patrolling the mountains, following up marauding parties, and shelling the kloofs. On one of these duties we had ridden to the top of the northern spur of the little Winterberg to reconnoitre the Koonap valley; sweeping the vast bush-dotted plain with the telescope, we spied about twenty Kaffirs, at a distance of some four miles or more, making across from Viljoens towards the Waterkloof. We determined to cut them off, and at once led our horses down the mountain side into the bushy kloof, by a rocky and difficult descent; and scrambling out on the opposite side through the thorny bushes, galloped across the plain for some miles, till we struck on their spoor, which we followed for a mile farther, where, leaving the road, it became lost in the grass. After having proceeded as far as we thought it possible for them to have got in the interim, and seeing nothing of them on the immense undulating plain, we concluded they must have observed us, and taken refuge in some of the isolated patches of bush scattered over it like islands. As the sun was already low, we were just about turning our steps homeward, when we suddenly espied them, about a mile off on our right, leisurely ascending out of a grassy hollow. Separating into two little parties to surround them, Bruce leading one, I the other, we went full speed down hill over the rough broken ground at a break-neck pace, keeping an eye on them to note if they observed us. But though neither stone nor bush intervened they never perceived us till within 500 yards, when throwing away their skin sacks, off they started like the wind, making for a distant narrow belt of wood, under cover of which and the rapidly approaching darkness, they hoped to give us the slip. The pace was killing, and we had yet nearly half a mile to make up before we could intercept them. The chase became most exciting, as we took flying, yawning sluits five or six feet deep. At last two of them gave in, but perceiving them to be women, we held on in pursuit of the others, firing an occasional shot. Just as they gained the cover we dashed up, and springing from our panting horses, followed them into the tangled underwood, leaving a few outside the belt to watch if they broke cover. But the gloom of the trees, increased by the rapidly approaching night, made our progress slow and difficult, and though we worked completely through the bush they escaped us.