It was not yet quite daylight, when all were suddenly roused by the hoarse cry of "Guard, turn out!" followed by "Fall in," "Stand to your arms." We were up and armed in an instant, and stood in companies on our respective faces of the encampment, and a large moving body of black figures in blankets, and armed with assegais, was indistinctly seen approaching; just as the sentry, who had thrice challenged them without any reply, was about to fire a shot across their bows to bring them to, they yelled out, "Amafingo! Amafingo!" They were the Fingo Levies of the returning Kei expedition; the wildest looking host that can be imagined, their woolly heads covered with ostrich feathers gathered on their route, and their scanty dress fluttering in rags. They poured into our camp with their usual boisterous hilarity, greeting officers and men alike, with a friendly "Morrow, Johnnie!" The Governor-General and the regular troops had taken a route down the other side of the mountain, and we turned our faces towards Fort Hare, where he was supposed already to have arrived. We had not gone more than a quarter of a mile, when a bugle sounded the "halt" far up on the hills, and we perceived the white flag and two or three figures rapidly descending the mountain; bringing the promised letter. As two of our party went to receive it, the enemy's bugle above, sounded the "right incline," and keeping away in that direction, they avoided thereby, as we afterwards learned, a deep sluit, of which they were thus politely made aware. No force was to be seen to day. The purport of the letter, which was very well written in English, was to propose terms of peace without surrendering their leaders. His Excellency took no notice whatever of the proposal, and not only expressed his displeasure at the conference having taken place at all, but offered a reward of five hundred pounds for Uithaalder, dead or alive. On approaching Fort Hare we were met by Lieutenant Lord Charles Hay, 2nd Queen's, one of the officers just returned with the Governor-General, and from him we learned that Kreli's "Great Place" had been burned to the ground; nearly 10,000 head of cattle, upwards of 100 horses, and 1000 goats, captured, and a great number of Kaffirs killed; a punishment the Chief would not soon forget, as the fine he had refused to pay was only 1500 head of cattle. The following day, on our return to Fort Beaufort, by a lower road, through bush white over with the twining jessamine, we passed through acres of young locusts, a sight as extraordinary as that of their flight; the whole ground being hidden by a moving black mass of little insects about the size of a common house-fly, giving it the appearance of a burnt plain; as we moved onward, the bulk of them cleared away before us with a rustling sound, yet still so thick did they lie underfoot, that we crushed them in thousands.