Just as we were once more inspanning to continue our journey, up rode Lady Florence Dixie and Sir Beaumont on their way to Newcastle. I was naturally pleased to have the opportunity of seeing a lady whose chivalrous defence of Cetywayo afterward had so much to do with his restoration, and with whose opinions on the late Zulu war and the treatment of the dethroned king I was so much in harmony. I may here mention that a few months later I had the pleasure of making Lady Florence Dixie’s personal acquaintance, when she and Sir Beaumont were passing through Kimberley. But we had sixteen miles further to travel to Majuba, so on we went, leaving Mount Prospect and its cemetery on our right. We reached the foot of the mountain about 2 P. M. The views of Majuba from the road as we approached were simply grand, and it was hard to picture war and its horrors invading such a lovely spot! I was again fortunate; at the regimental canteen at the bottom I met a corporal, who had been in all the three engagements, and persuaded him to guide us to the top, which he did, whiling away the tediousness of our mountain climb by relating his experience of the dreadful Sunday (never to be blotted out of South African history), and by recounting events of which he stated that he was an eye-witness, and which, whether his account was strictly correct or not, I prefer to leave unrecorded. Greenlees, Maclean, myself and our guide all went up the same path, being the _via dolorosa_ the English soldiers under Colley took on the ill-fated night of Feb. 26th, 1881, and not toiling, laden with ammunition and accoutrements, as they did, from 9:30 P. M. to near daybreak, but making the four miles’ circuitous ascent in three hours.[70] The top is just like a large soup plate, sinking down all round from the sides and flat at the bottom (about 420 yards long by 300 wide), so that no troops resting in the centre could see an enemy advancing up the sides of the mountain. Our guide told us the first intimation he got of the attack of the Dutch was from the consternation which seized every one, when the Boers, who had gained the summit from the Transvaal side, suddenly poured into them their first deadly general volley, although like other eye-witnesses he said there had been considerable desultory firing since daybreak. This volley at once created such a panic that a regular stampede commenced, which the officers tried in vain to stop. It was _sauve qui peut_. I had pointed out to me the perpendicular rocks, some as much as forty feet in height, where many of our men killed themselves jumping headlong down them in their mad retreat, bleeding, tumbling, dying one on the other.