We passed the dead body of one of our men stripped naked, lying in the jungle with a ghastly wound in his chest; but having orders to advance through the belt, and join the column on the other side, it was impossible to stop to bury or remove it. When the column came up, a grave was dug for the other men; and the Colonel, on my reporting having seen the body, sent me back with half a dozen men to bring it in. We had, therefore, to retrace our steps about a quarter of a mile through the forest, at the edge of which a guard was placed to render us assistance if attacked. The magnificent trees, and the fallen trunks in various stages of decay, overgrown with creepers, or green with moss, forcibly reminded one of the backwoods of Canada. We proceeded in perfect silence, with arms ready at a moment's warning, and again came up to the body. The stems of two or three young trees, picked up by the way, and tied together by wild vine, served as a stretcher, on which we bore the body back, and without interruption, nearly to the edge of the wood. As we stopped at this point to change bearers, a sound like the sharp crack of a dry stick was heard; but as we could see no one, and a dead silence reigned around, we resumed our burden, from whose reopened wound a pool of blood had flowed where it had rested. We had just gained the open ground, when suddenly along the face of the wood there blazed a sharp fire of musketry, and the enemy sprang from every bush; our comrades of the extended company at the same moment briskly returning their fire. The balls again whistled past us, lodging in the trees with a sharp _thud_, or ploughing up the ground. One of our men was severely wounded in the knee, and died afterwards while undergoing amputation; the rest plunged into the forest in pursuit of the enemy, who left seven dead on the ground, carrying off many more dead and wounded. This interruption passed, we proceeded with the corpse to the grave, which the men had dug in the soft soil with their hands, billhooks, and bayonets, where we buried it with the two other bodies of the poor fellows who had fallen; and, having filled up the grave, carefully sprinkled it with dead leaves and sticks, a precaution which, as we afterwards learned from a Kaffir prisoner, was of no avail, for the crafty wretches soon found the spot, and dragging the bodies out, exposed them, as they said white men ought to be, "to the sun and the vulture."