On the morning of the 18th, while General Maitland was on a reconnoitring expedition, he and his party came suddenly upon an ambush of Kaffirs; happily he had with him an escort of dragoons, who dashed after these savages. Had Sir Peregrine not been so attended, he, with his staff, would have been cut off. A party of the 27th went out from Victoria to clear the bush of the Kaffirs. In the skirmish which ensued, a serjeant of the regiment being shot in the ankle, the savages rushed upon him and beat him to death with their knob-kiurries (war-clubs). After the troops had taken up their position at Block Drift, they were joined by Sir P. Maitland, who immediately assumed the command, and superintended the defences. But, while the troops were employed in the Amatola Mountains, Graham's Town was utterly unprotected, and bodies of Kaffirs poured into the Colony. Then began the work of devastation, plunder, and murder. Alas! while our hearts were torn with anxiety for those dear to us in the field, we knew ourselves to be surrounded by savages who openly threatened to attack us! In all directions we heard the reports of musketry. Now, a murdered waggon-driver was brought in, and now, a Kaffir spy was shot close to the town; the townspeople of course exaggerating the one waggon-driver to five or six, and the spy to "thousands of Kaffirs." On the 29th of April, Colonel Somerset arrived with his division. The sight of the troops winding down the hill towards Graham's Town, cheered the drooping spirits of the inhabitants, and made many hearts beat with alternate hope and fear, for we knew not what intelligence they might bring, or what dangers they had encountered. Little, indeed, can they, who never experienced the horrors and anxieties of war, especially a war with savages, comprehend the feelings of those who wait for tidings of the absent. The weary watchings, the very dread of the arrival of expresses, bearing we know not what tidings, the feverish restlessness to see the printed dispatches of the day, the waiting for hours in uncertainty, and then the regret, amidst our thankfulness at so much being done, that there was yet so much to do. Ah! these are terrible hours. I especially remember the reading of the first dispatch--the wife of one in command of a division, which had not been engaged, but of which I shall have to speak hereafter, tearing open the papers with trembling fingers, while another and I leaned over her shoulder, and would see what she tried to read with a faltering voice. Children looked up alarmed at they knew not what, pausing in their play, and quite silent; while shots echoed along the hills and through the kloofs above the town, and the sky above and around us was lit with the fires from the devastated homesteads of the settlers. The very sight of the thousands of cattle and sheep being driven in at sunset by armed herds, was melancholy; and the