A cavalry escort was leaving with two mule waggons, conveying specie to the Frontier for the payment of the troops, so I took advantage of the opportunity to return with them, as did several others--Major Somerset, Captain Dundas, Assistant-Commissary-General Sale, Lady A. Russell (on her way to join her husband at Beaufort), and Mrs. Sale. At the entrance of the Ecca valley we met a company of the 74th, sent to cover our passage. When we had got half-way through, and near the most dangerous part of the road, the axle tree of the ladies' waggon broke down, from the jolting and bumping over the rocks, so that we were obliged to abandon it. The contents were with difficulty packed in the remaining waggons, already well filled, and consequently the ladies were obliged to walk under a hot burning sun; the dust, which was several inches deep, rising in stifling clouds at every step; but they trudged on with the greatest spirit, and at night, outside the walls of Fort Brown, roughed it in a little wattle and daub cottage, mud-floored, and with holes in the thatch big enough to enable them to see how night rolled on in the heavens, and to hear more plainly the serenading of the jackals and hyænas. As we approached the scene of the late attack on the Koonap hill, the mules became so alarmed and restive, that they could not be got past the place till the dead horses and oxen had been removed, and thrown down the ravine; and even then it was not without the greatest difficulty that both they and many of the horses, which trembled and snorted violently, were induced to go forward. It may be as well to mention here that a great part of the lost Minié rifles and ammunition were recaptured by Maj.-Gen. Yorke a few days after the attack on the waggons, and others subsequently by Colonel Napier, and though the latter were fitted with nipples, made by a deserter from the Cape Corps, they had been of little or no service to the Rebels, for, not understanding conical bullets, they had put them into the barrel point downwards, as made up in the cartridge, the natural consequence of which was that they did not carry more than half the range of an old musket. On the evening of the 25th, after a journey such as few of the gentler sex would attempt, the ladies arrived in safety at Fort Beaufort, and by the evening following, I was once more ensconced in our solitary little fort in the mountains. FOOTNOTES: [21] Arduina bispinosa. CHAPTER XII. SIXTH ATTACK ON THE WATERKLOOF--UITHAALDER--RETURN OF EXPEDITION AGAINST KRELI.