"5th. Kaffirs known to be in the immediate neighbourhood of Graham's Town, an attack fully anticipated by some; fortunately, we never entered into these `alarms.' The soldiers' wives on the hill in extreme terror. Shots firing all day rapidly. I wonder more accidents do not occur among those who have lately learned the use of fire-arms. I stood at the gate in the evening and watched a fire very near the town: it blazed up for about ten minutes, and was extinguished as suddenly as it had been lit. Fires seen in other directions, supposed to be signals for a general assembly of the warriors in the mountains. More cattle stolen within three miles of us to-day. Walked down in the evening to the end of the green, to look at our defences. Sorry things! A square of thatched barracks, more like huts than houses, contains sometimes no more than fifteen soldiers, some of them left here as ineffective. Our space near the guardhouse is defended by a wooden stockade, breast-high, and two other passages are banked up about three feet high. No picquets at this end of the town, for want of men. We have a kloof just above the mess-house, and it was a few miles from there that Mr Norden, of the Yeomanry, was shot. "6th. Our garrison is reinforced by a corps of liberated Africans, a happy, lazy-looking set, who are chiefly employed in escorting waggons. The Malays have also been brought in a body from Cape Town. They take the war coolly enough, and when off duty, lie about the green in the warm and moonlight nights, whistling and singing the most harmonious choruses. They will not enter the bush, and have never been of use in rescuing cattle.