40 lbs. coffee, 30 " sugar, 20 " biscuit, 25 " meal, 20 " rice, 10 " pea-meal, 10 lbs. candles, 5 " salt, Half-a-dozen bottles pickled red cabbage, 10 lbs. gunpowder, 12 doz. bullets, with 1 case brandy. The pickled cabbage was an excellent and most necessary substitute for vegetables, which were not to be had for love or money, in consequence of which scurvy had already appeared among the men. Besides the two pairs of serviceable boots, and three pairs of socks, which each man started with, we took barrels of both in the waggons, as also plenty of leather for supply and repair on the march. As we went from store to store in the town, purchasing the thousand and one lesser necessaries required for such a journey, as much interest and excitement were displayed by the townspeople as if we had been going to the Great Lake, and as much was felt by ourselves at the prospect of visiting new tribes and a new country, and whether engaged in active warfare or not, at any rate of seeing for ourselves those vast and wonderful herds of wild game, lions, zebras, ostriches, springbok, gemsbok, blesbok, and wild beasts, which from school days we had pictured in imagination roaming over those boundless plains. On the 10th, all our preparations completed, the last waggon loaded, and the last soldier hauled away from his "doch an dhurris" with friends, both black and white, the column fell in, the Rifle Brigade Band struck up, and we marched out of the town, accompanied for the first mile by all the officers of the garrison, and a crowd of men, women, and children, of all colours. We halted the first night at the entrance of the Blinkwater Poort. The third day, after seeing nothing but a few deserted farms, we reached the ruins of Fort Armstrong, destroyed by General Somerset at an early period of the war, when in possession of the Hottentot Rebels. The place consisted of a strong square tower, surrounded by some score of wattle and daub houses, standing on a singularly isolated, or rather peninsulated hill. Of this the Hottentots of the Kat River Mission had taken possession, turning out the European occupants, in a most inclement night, to escape as best they might across the mountains to Whittlesea; themselves living in the most disgraceful licentiousness and depravity, offering indignities to the English women, plundering the farmers, and revelling on the spoil. General Somerset, in order to break up this nest of robbers and traitors, appeared before it on the 23rd of February, 1851, with a force of troops and Burghers, offering them, at the last moment, terms of capitulation, which, however, they scorned, though they acted on his humane counsel, and sent their women and children from the Fort out of the way of danger. On their removal he at once attacked the place, shelling the Fort, which he stormed and carried; in two hours reducing it to ruins.