The Beresford stable was now seldom idle even when the owner was away. In 1879 his horse Telegram was figuring in Calcutta, winning the Alipore Plate. The same horse got beaten a little later by quite a slow mare called Blue Bonnet, belonging to Mr. E. T. Roberts, which was a piece of bad luck, more especially as the cause was the poor beast’s breaking a blood-vessel, which, however, did not prove a very serious matter, as he was patched up and fulfilled his obligations to his owner by winning the Calcutta Cup on the second day of the meeting. At Dacca, which is about 150 miles from Calcutta, Lord William won at this time a steeplechase with (I believe) Telegram, and it was rumoured that for some unaccountable reason the Dacca steamer was delayed for a day, instead of starting at the advertised time, which was very convenient for Telegram, as it allowed him to be at Dacca in time for the meeting, which would otherwise have been impossible. Everybody wondered how such an unheard-of thing could have happened. I wonder if Lord William could explain? It was in the January of 1879 that the Viceroy’s anxieties were increased by war breaking out in South Africa. In case any of my younger readers do not know, or have forgotten, about this war, I had better recall the immediate cause leading up to it. In 1879 Sir Theophilus Shepstone had annexed the Transvaal. Sir Bartle Frere, as High Commissioner, explained to the Zulu King, Cetewayo, that there must be no more arguing about a certain strip of land claimed both by him and the Transvaal Republic, and to avoid further trouble he had better disband his army. This demand, stated as bare, undiluted fact and shorn of parliamentary terminology, sounds rather high-handed, but anybody interested in the history can read the matter up and form his then more mature opinion, as there were other matters of importance attached to the situation without which it would not be possible to form a fair judgment. At any rate Cetewayo, seeing “no sense in it,” as an old retainer of ours used to say when requested to do anything he did not like, began the row by totally defeating the British troops at Isandhlwana on January 22nd, 1879, which was not a good beginning for us, and we felt rather small. The horrors of that time must be still fresh in the memories of all persons alive now, who were old enough to read and think in 1879. Lord Chelmsford, who was in command, was greatly blamed for his plan of campaign, but he afterwards retrieved his mistakes to some extent by defeating the Zulus at the battle of Ulundi and taking Cetewayo prisoner. That, however, was poor comfort to those whose dear ones had been sacrificed to his mistakes, that is to say if the disaster was attributable to his errors, which I am not competent to judge.