We halted for some time here, and the sun was so blazing hot that we stretched blankets over the stands of piled arms, as a shelter from its burning rays; in front of us, rising in the distance above the dark forest that sloped abruptly into the valley below, stood the grand and lofty Winterberg, its lower ranges of a deep purple tint, the higher white with snow. Along the front of the forest the huts were totally destroyed, but just within its shelter we found many still standing, untouched and quite deserted, also cattle kraals and stables, made of young trees, felled and twined in and out between the larger standing ones; in the huts were all sorts of odd things--calabashes, beads, bridles, hatchets, karosses, bags of seeds and of the red clay with which they cover their bodies, rheims, large pieces of the root of the Noë-boom root, peeled for food; two or three litters of blind puppies, jealously guarded by half-famished curs; quantities of sheep-skins and piles of bullocks' horns, and all kinds of minor rubbish, with several bullet moulds, and a quantity of newly-cast balls. The trees around were scored with bullet marks high and low, and many shivered into splinters by the shells; one or two large and recently-made graves were found, and a sickening odour arose from the thick underwood, where there must have been many more bodies hidden among the tangled thickets. While clambering among the huge masses of creeper-grown rock, which were rudely thrown together in every size and form, among the forest trees growing out of their clefts, I accidentally observed, half covered by the wild vine, a narrow opening between two enormous crags, and peeping in with some trouble, found, to my astonishment, a cave or chamber capable of holding a dozen or fifteen men, the floor covered with grass matting and sheep-skins, while the entrance was naturally concealed by a clump of thick bushes. From such hiding places our troops were shot down by unseen enemies, and officers picked off at the head of their astonished men.