No less than eight days were consumed in this exciting operation, and the detachment, which had been left behind its division, to complete some necessary details, were now in full route for head-quarters. By forced marches, in forty-eight hours it overtook the column under Colonel Eyre, which had taken five days to travel the same distance. The subsequent rivers in the journey, being as shallow as rivulets, were easily forded, and no necessity occurred for employing the resources which the sappers had at command. The detachment arrived at King William’s Town on the 29th January. Four other sappers despatched from Bloom fontein and attached to the division under Colonel Napier, were also engaged as pontoneers, and completed the concluding operations for crossing the column. On arriving at Graham’s Town they joined a detachment of the corps there.[117] On the following muster parade, a letter was read, in which his Excellency commended the zeal and activity of the sappers as displayed in the passage of the Orange river by the divisions under Colonels Eyre and Napier, and justly attributed the success of the manœuvre to the able manner in which it had been conducted by Lieutenant Siborne. Lieutenant-Colonel Cole, the commanding royal engineer, in his final report, dated 1st March, 1853, to Brigade-Major Walpole, communicating the termination of the war, thus wrote of the services and conduct of the corps:—“I cannot conclude what is probably my last report to you, without conveying the gratification I have experienced throughout by the value which has been attached to the services of the non-commissioned officers and men of the royal sappers and miners, not only in public dispatches, but from the opinion expressed to me by the late commander of the forces especially, and the officers under whose command they have served, and who have in many instances shown their confidence practically. “I am enabled to add that from the reports I have received and my own observation, the non-commissioned officers and men have in all instances throughout this arduous struggle shown a zeal and determination to further the service in which they were engaged, and have displayed their usual gallantry and discipline whenever they have been in the presence of the enemy.” ----- Footnote 101: