Positions were assigned to the different officers in command, and the scheme looked extremely well on paper, and to men who were not acquainted with the district and the exceeding difficulty of travelling through it. Unfortunately, with the same lamentable failure in the Intelligence Department which has characterised the more important proceedings of 1879, very little was known, by those in command, of the country, or of what was going on in it. Mr. Shepstone himself, whose supposed knowledge of the people, their land, and all concerning them was so greatly and naturally relied upon, proved totally ignorant of the distances which lay between one point and another, or of the difficulties to be overcome in reaching them. In consequence of this singular ignorance a little force was sent out on the evening of November 2nd, under command of Major Durnford, R.E., chief of the staff, with orders to seize and hold a certain pass known as the Bushman’s River Pass, over which Langalibalele was expected to escape; the distance having been miscalculated by about two-thirds, and the difficulties of the way immensely underrated. Major Durnford was himself a new-comer in the colony at that time, and had therefore no personal knowledge of the country; but he was supplied with full, though, as it soon appeared, unreliable information by those under whose command he served, and who were in possession of a plan or diagram of the district which turned out to be altogether incorrect. He did, indeed, reach his assigned post, though four-and-twenty hours after the time by which he expected to be there; while those sent out to take up other positions never reached them at all, owing to the same incorrect information concerning locality. Major Durnford was in command of a party composed of 2 officers, 6 non-commissioned officers, and 47 rank and file of the Natal and Karkloof Carbineers, 24 mounted Basutos,[14] and a native interpreter. His orders were[15] to seize and hold the Bushman’s River Pass, “with a view to preventing the entrance in or out of the colony of any natives until the expedition is ready to cross over.” Special orders were also given to him that he was on no account to fire the first shot. There was one excellent reason, not generally taken into consideration, for this order, in the fact that the three days given by Government to the tribe in which to surrender would not be over until midday on the 3rd of November.