Having made the chief aware of the political consequences of his defeat, and obtained his subscription to a treaty, the victorious troops retraced their steps to the colony. The Caledon was easily passed, and after a march of about fifty miles, the Lieuw was gained. Recollecting the difficulty of the previous operation, Colonel Eyre ordered that some efforts should be employed to discover a really practicable drift. A few of the waggons crossed at the old ford, but in the mean time sergeant Ireland—a man who had received praise for his boat services and usefulness in the demolition of the wreck of the ‘Royal George’—discovered a diagonal drift so convenient, as to render the passage one of maximum facility. The bottom was rocky the whole distance, with a shallow flow trippling over the stones; while the general stream escaped through fissures and cavities in the rock, and merged into the river at the other side of the bar. The trickling, however, at the drift, caused it to be very slippery, but to make the footing sure, the defect was remedied by scattering along its surface a quantity of sand, which brought the new ford into favour, and the old one was abandoned. Crossing the Caledon, a second time, without difficulty, the march was sustained to the Orange River. Its passage, however, was a tedious and protracted operation. The rains had increased the height of the stream, and expanded it to 225 yards. The current was resistless and the weather squally. A heavy flat-bottomed punt and the India-rubber cylinders were the only means within reach to achieve the movement. Such an organization, to throw over an army of some strength with guns and troops of horses, attended by a cumbersome train of waggons of unusual magnitude for number was ridiculously small. Five sappers with Lieutenant Siborne manned the raft, and a like number of the troops oared the punt, each working its course, from bank to bank, on a separate hawser stretched across the stream. Thirty-five men, armed and fully accoutred, were taken over at each trip and landed every ten minutes. Indeed the passage across only occupied a third of the time, owing to a skilful use of sheaves—instead of thimbles and eyes—running on the warps, to which short lines were attached issuing from the raft. The latter again was placed obliquely to the warp, by which one of the angles or shoulders of the float was pressed forward to the hawser. All this is probably too technical to be generally understood. The current just suited the arrangement, and lashing against the cylinders—which were broadside to it—drove the raft onward at a rapid rate. Not needing to help in its propulsion, the men, looking to their equilibrium, simply balanced themselves on the deck. Until sergeant Ireland hit upon this expedient, the iron thimbles worked but idly on the rough hawsers, and the raft was necessarily hauled across by the manual dexterity of the pontoneers. Horses, mules, oxen, howitzers, guns, and all sorts of