"Life of course was very monotonous. The bands of the two regiments played on alternate afternoons, and every morning they were to be heard practising outside the entrenchment. The most pleasant part of the day was just after six o'clock, when we used to be enlivened in the cool of the evening by the fife and drum band playing the 'Retreat.' The water with which we were supplied was indeed excellent, and the bathing places, I need not say, were very extensively patronised. The grazing was not nearly sufficient for the cattle, and from the first they must have suffered very much from want of nourishment. You will have heard of the fate of the eleven hundred head of oxen and the span of donkeys which we sent away from the camp in expectation of their reaching the Lower Tugela. They left us in charge of nineteen Kaffirs, but at the Inyezane they were attacked by a large body of Kaffirs. The natives in charge of the cattle decamped and reached the fort in safety, and the enemy got possession of the whole of the cattle, which they drove off. The donkeys were all killed with the exception of one, and this sagacious animal surprised everybody in camp by returning soon after the Kaffirs had come back." The prices of food at this time were scarcely in keeping with those of the London market. A bottle of pickles fetched 25s., and a ham L7, 10s.! Milk was purchasable for 23s. a tin, and sardines for 12s. As may be imagined, the arrival of Lord Chelmsford at Eshowe was a matter for general thanksgiving. One who was present records in _Blackwood's Magazine_ the joy on the arrival of the first outsiders: "On the afternoon of the 3rd of April, the column detailed on the 31st of March (about 500 whites and 50 blacks, and the mounted infantry, with one gun) left the fort under General Pearson, to meet the relief column.... A solitary horseman was seen towards 5 P.M. galloping up the new road to the fort. He had an officer's coat on, and we could see a sword dangling from his side. Who is he?... He proved to be the correspondent of the _Standard_. 'First in Eshowe,' he said, 'proud to shake hands with an Eshowian.' A second horseman appeared approaching the fort, his horse apparently much blown, Who is he?... The correspondent of the _Argus_ (Cape Town). They had a race who would be first at Eshowe, the _Standard_ winning by five minutes!" Thus ended happily the crushing anxiety under which Colonel Pearson and his party had lived, and the foretaste of the future triumph seemed already to remove the memory of many weeks of bitterness. Serious differences of opinion soon arose between Lord Chelmsford and Sir Henry Bulwer, the Governor of Natal, but on the intricacies of these it is unnecessary to dwell; suffice it to say, that they were in a measure the cause of Sir Garnet Wolseley's arrival on the scene somewhat later, as Sir Garnet united in his own person both supreme civil and supreme military power.