A party of two sergeants and sixty-five rank and file, under Captain H. C. B. Moody, R.E., returned to King William’s Town on the 1st January, 1852, after three days’ march in escorting supplies to Forts White and Cox. One sergeant and thirty rank and file accompanied a patrol of nearly 500 troops from King William’s Town, under the command of Lieutenant-Colonel Skipwith, 43rd regiment, on the 3rd January. Captain Moody with Lieutenant Fowler, R.E., commanded the sappers. The American pontoon was carried with the party. The division crossed the Kei on foot, at a drift, on the 7th and 8th. On the 14th Colonel Eyre’s division appeared in sight, but as the Kei had then risen considerably, the pontoon was used with effect to cross the stream. About one mile and a half above the drift, at a point where the water was smooth though the current was strong, the raft was employed. The river was about 100 yards wide, with a muddy bottom; the bank was easily accessible by infantry, but not by cavalry or artillery. To form the communication a strong hawser was passed over to the opposite bank, and the pontoon, attached to it by two short lines with running loops, was passed from shore to shore, carrying forty men at each trip. On the first day, seven companies of the 73rd and 60th regiments were in this manner ferried across, as also about 100 Fingoe women and children. During the day the tide again rapidly fell, and the waggons, &c., crossed the stream at the main drift. Captain Moody, in reporting upon the conduct of his detachment, said, “Nothing could exceed the energy and willingness with which they all worked.” From the 31st January to 2nd February one sergeant and forty rank and file, under Lieutenant Fowler, R.E., accompanied the patrol under the command of Captain Campbell, Cape mounted rifles, and, supplied with sickles, assisted in devastating the crops of the enemy in the neighbourhood of Perie and cutting off their supplies. On the Mangoka river a like razzia was effected, and after a night’s bivouac on the Gwokkobi, several huts were burnt and fifty acres of corn cut down. Further destruction was carried on up the Gwokkobi and Umnaza rivers to the Perie station, to the extent of eighty acres. After a slight skirmish with about 200 Kaffirs in the Perie bush, the patrol returned to King William’s Town, laying waste in its route the gardens in the vicinity of Fort Beresford and down the Umtabini to the point of its junction with the Buffalo river, comprising another area of about eighty acres of thriving corn. Captain Fenwick, R.E., with twenty rank and file, formed the European part of an escort of 100 strong, which conveyed supplies in five bullock waggons, in addition to seventy head of cattle, to Major Kyle’s column in the Tomacha—a distance of seventeen miles from King William’s Town, to which place the detachment returned on the 5th February after two days’ patrolling.