On the morning of their return I was sent with an escort of one hundred men to convey to Fort Beaufort a train of waggons, containing a quantity of spare arms and accoutrements to go into the ordnance store, with some slaughter oxen for the use of that garrison, and to bring back commissariat supplies for the camp. We were joined on the way, for the sake of protection, by a burgher fleeing from his farm, with his wife and family, and three thousand sheep. We soon neared the spot where, about a week ago, the wounded Kaffir had been left; two or three _asvogels_, or vultures, skimmed heavily along the ground from a black object, which proved to be his body, already half devoured. On the approach of evening we halted on the _open_, drawing up the waggons in a circle, with their dissel-booms outwards. The fires were lighted in the inner space, and the sentries posted about fifty yards outside, with an outlying picquet of Fingoes, for the night was pitch dark, and the neighbourhood infested with Kaffirs, to whom our flocks and herds were a great temptation. Wrapped in a plaid, I sat by the fire contemplating the scene within our little encampment; on one side the soldiers chatted merrily and carelessly over their supper; on the other were the Fingoes, jabbering in their strange dialect; some cutting up lumps of meat with their sharp assegais, and others lying round the fires in wild groups; while the Hottentot drivers, and fore-loupers, sat under their own waggons smoking apart; the whole brightly illuminated by the blazing fires reflected from the circular wall of white covered waggons. One by one, the men dropped off to sleep, and I was soon left to my own thoughts, surrounded by motionless forms rolled in blankets. On going the rounds at ten o'clock, I found the Fingoe Levies had very coolly left their posts, and were sleeping comfortably by the picquet fire among their comrades. Calling their sergeant, an immensely big fellow, he rushed to the fire, and kicked up the slumbering figures one after another, overhauling them without ceremony by arms and legs, sorting and turning them over like a creel of fish, shouting all the time at the top of his voice. Having found the delinquents, and awarded them "extra guards" as a punishment, with a threat of the _jambok_, or still more dreaded stoppage of rations, in case of further offence, we marched them back to their posts giving them to understand, that as they would be visited every half hour, it would be advisable to keep a good look out. What with the angry and incessant barking of the dogs, the uninterrupted bleating of sheep, and the loud snoring of the oxen, all attempts to sleep were in vain. So I sat up, and squatting by the fire, amused myself with piling on fresh wood, wishing by the way, as the picture of old Horace occurred to me-- "Ligna super foco large reponens," &c., that I could lay my hand on some of the "quadrimum merum," to render the comparison a little more happy.