At sunset we approached Beaufort by the smooth green down, over which innumerable herds of cattle were winding, whistled on by wild kaross-clad herdsmen, gun and assegais in hand, and entered the town through the Fingo Kraals, where swarthy maidens were milking their goats, saturæ capellæ; men kraaling their cattle for the night, and women of all ages--young and graceful, old and haggard, skeletons or shaking masses of fat, constantly arriving, with huge bundles of firewood balanced on their heads. Several of the soldiers who had been wounded in the late operations, died during the hot weather, in hospital; as often as we accompanied their remains to the beautiful burying ground on the green flats outside the town, with the impressive accompaniments of a military funeral, the alternating strains of the "Dead March," and the wailing lament of the Pipes, it was impossible not to feel something unusually touching in the death of a brave man laid to his last rest so far from home and friends. On these occasions, we invariably observed, while the crowd of Fingoes behaved with decorum and feeling, that the Totties, as we passed, displayed a malicious and gratified expression; indeed, we had it on good authority, that more than once, men and women had indulged in dancing and open rejoicing because another of the "roed batjes" (red jackets) had gone to his grave. The head-quarter Division of the Kei expedition entered the town. The large square was filled with a host of ragged soldiers, and the streets were blocked up by bellowing thousands of cattle, while officers, out at the elbows, mounted on half starved horses; Fingoes driving oxen laden with dagha; and camp followers leading pack-horses covered with blankets, raw meat, and jingling kettles, worked their way through the moving mass. All was din and confusion, for the Fingoes would not go to their kraals, and the cattle had none to go to. They were afterwards sold by public auction in the centre of the town, and the proceeds divided among those who had formed the expedition. FOOTNOTES: [22] Cuculus Indicator. [23] Nectarina. CHAPTER XIII. FINAL ATTACK, AND CLEARANCE OF THE WATERKLOOF. On the afternoon of Sunday the 12th of September, as we were leaving church, the 73rd regiment, from King Williams' Town, under Colonel Eyre, marched through the town on their way to join the force assembling for a grand and final attack on the Waterkloof. They encamped on the other side the river, on the Blinkwater road; though absolutely in rags, patched with every description and colour of cloth and leather, many a shirt tail dangling from under the lappels of their coats, they looked most soldier-like, and marched with the greatest regularity, the Rifle Brigade band playing them through the streets.