Note 1. A fort on the banks of the Keiskama, once in the occupation of the English, but given up to the Kaffirs by the last treaties, when the Great Fish River was established as the boundary. It is now defaced, little being left to mark its site, the Kaffirs having been permitted to carry away the wood-work of the buildings, which originally cost at least 50,000 pounds. Note 2. In building the new barracks at Peddie, pipes have been placed along the roofs, for the purpose of collecting water in the rainy season. This is a great advantage to the residents, who hitherto have been dependent on tanks and flays (hollows in the earth, which are filled by heavy rains). PART TWO, CHAPTER FIVE. BEGINNING OF THE KAFFIR WAR. During this period I have little of personal adventure to record. After a sojourn of a few months at Fort Peddie, we were removed to Graham's Town, and I was residing there when the war broke out. In the month of February, 1846, the Gaika Chief, Sandilla, having before agreed to the proposal of the British authorities in South Africa, that a military post should be established at Block Drift, near his own kraal, or residence, and on the confines of the ceded territory [Note 1], chose to withdraw his consent, and treat the troops sent thither with great insolence. His excuse was, that he had given his consent to the Resident Agent, without consulting his councillors who were of a different opinion. On receiving this haughty message, the Lieutenant-Governor, Colonel Hare, summoned Sandilla to a conference at Block Drift; the young chief of the Gaikas appeared before the Lieutenant-Governor and his small array of British troops, surrounded by two thousand warriors, armed with muskets, and capitally mounted. The arms had been purchased from British traders,--there being then no law to check the indiscriminate sale of arms and ammunition to the Kaffirs,--and the greater proportion of the horses had been plundered from the unfortunate farmers in the colony. Nothing was decided at this conference, and the project of establishing a post at Block Drift was for the time, if not altogether, abandoned. The troops returned to Fort Beaufort, Sandilla to his kraal, and, some days after, an abject and pathetic message was received by Colonel Hare from the Gaika chief, with the assent of several other chiefs subservient to him. The message was exceedingly well "got up," but meant nothing.