A strange dead calm reigned in this solitude; grain had grown luxuriantly round the waggons, sprouting from the seed that dropped from the loads, falling on soil fertilised by the life-blood of gallant men. So long in most places had grown the grass that it mercifully shrouded the dead, whom four long months to-morrow we have left unburied. In a patch of long grass, near the right flank of the camp, lay Colonel Durnford’s body, a central figure of a knot of brave men who had fought it out around their chief to the bitter end. A stalwart Zulu, covered by his shield, lay at the Colonel’s feet. Around him lay fourteen Natal Carbineers and their officer, Lieutenant Scott, with a few Mounted Police[170] (twenty). Clearly they had rallied round Colonel Durnford in a last despairing attempt to cover the flank of the camp, and had stood fast from choice, when they might have essayed to fly for their horses, who were close by their side at the piquet-line. With this group were about thirty gallant fellows of the 24th. In other places the 24th men were found as if fallen in rallying square, and there were bodies scattered all along the front of the camp. The fallen were roughly buried, except those of the men of the 24th Regiment. These were ordered to be left untouched. General Marshall had nourished a natural and seemly wish to give interment to all the dead who so long had lain at Isandhlwana, but it appeared that the 24th desired to perform the ceremony themselves in presence of both battalions. One has much sympathy with the regiment, but General Marshall offered to convey a burial-party with tools from Rorke’s Drift in waggons, and it seemed scarcely right to postpone longer than absolutely necessary what respect for our honoured dead required. Thus, the Zulus, who have carefully buried their own dead, will return to find we visited the place, not to bury our dead, but to remove a batch of waggons! In the desolate camp were many sad relics, and the ground was strewn with them and the spoil of the plundered waggons. Scarcely any arms were found, and no ammunition—a few stray rusted bayonets and assegais only were to be seen. Teams of horses were hitched on to the soundest of the waggons, till forty fit to travel were collected on the crest, and sent under escort to Rorke’s Drift, and meantime scouting-parties had fired the kraals around, but found no Zulus. “I shall offer few comments on the Isandhlwana position. Had the world been searched for a position offering the easiest facilities for being surprised, none could have been well found to surpass it. The position seems to offer a premium on disaster, and asks to be attacked. In the rear laagered waggons would have discounted its defects; but the camp was more defenceless than an English village. Systematic scouting could alone have justified such a position, and this too clearly cannot have been carried out.”—_Daily News_, 20th June, 1879.