Several farm-houses, fired by the Kaffirs, were smoking at a distance, in the peaceful looking valley; and further down we found the road strewn with grain, thickly trampled, and stained with blood; while from under a cairn of loosely piled stones, close by among the bushes, peeped the head and shoulders of a corpse. An old man, a ruined settler, whose house had been destroyed by the enemy, had been trekking this way the day before with his sons, and his last waggon-load of grain, when they were waylaid by the Kaffirs, who cruelly murdered two of the defenceless party. Such outrages on the heart-broken settlers were almost of daily occurrence; often exasperating them to savage fury, but more frequently reducing them to helpless despair. After five and twenty miles' march, we halted at a drift on the Little Fish River, about a mile from Somerset, which is a pretty cluster of white houses, gardens, and orange trees, at the foot of a beautiful green mountain. This was our resting place for two days while waiting the arrival of the oxen, hourly expected, on their way from the Orange River district, and which we were to escort back for the use of the troops. In the neighbourhood is a large and celebrated orange grove, which we visited. It lies at the entrance of a deep ravine in the mountain, and as we rode up, the sun shone on thousands of ripe oranges, lemons, citrons, shaddocks, and _natches_, a very small and peculiar flavoured kind of orange. The trees, which were of great size, bent under the weight of fruit, and down the long avenues the branches almost met overhead. Fingoe boys, armed with guns, were protecting the fruit from monkeys, as lads at home watch the corn-fields.