On entering the belt of wood, passable only by a narrow rocky path, we had to march in file. The timber was very fine, with luxuriant evergreens beneath, immense creepers and baboon-ropes hanging in festoons, or pendant to the ground, from branches fifty or sixty feet high. The rear of our column had nearly gained the other side of the belt, from which the head had already emerged, when a sudden volley from a dark thicket above us made the forest ring, while the balls whistled past our heads and struck the trees on the opposite side the path, sending splinters flying on every side. We continued advancing, firing at every puff of smoke, the only indication of the whereabouts of our hidden enemy, until we gained the open, when we were saluted by a succession of volleys from an angle of the forest on our left, especially directed at each officer as he came up, though fortunately, without doing further injury than grazing a few of the men's accoutrements. We were moving along the open to join the General, when an alarm was given that the 12th regiment, in rear, with the pack horses, was cut off in the pass. Our companies, just formed into open column, were ordered to the right about, and sent back again at "the double" to extend along the edge of the wood; when a very pretty skirmish took place; our men sheltered by the rocky ground, and the enemy dodging behind the trees and firing from breastworks of loose stones, thrown up in front of their village, along the edge of the forest. Under cover of our fire the 12th cleared the pass, bearing a wounded man with them; half a dozen of our mounted men were wounded, and several riderless horses galloped wildly past. The artillery, posted on a rising ground, about a quarter of a mile in our rear, opened on the bush, wherever the Kaffirs showed themselves in parties, and sent round shot and "spherical case" right in amongst them, whirring and _hurtling_ over our heads with an astounding, and, at first, rather startling noise, splintering the trees and killing all within their deadly range. In the hottest of the fire, poor Ricketts, of the 91st, was carried past us, dangerously wounded in the chest. After a sharp skirmish, of about a quarter of an hour, the enemy's fire was completely silenced, and the wood apparently totally deserted;--the "recall" sounded, the skirmishers closed and retired, the regiments were re-formed, and the heavy masses of infantry, moving from all sides across the green flat, joined the General's party.