The patrol sent out to recover the remains of these officers, after marching about three hours through thick bush, came upon their bodies which they brought into the bivouack at Spring-Flats, where they arrived about nine in the evening. They were interred by the officers and men of the Battalion on the next day at a place called Shaw’s fontein; bushes being burnt over the graves, to prevent the Kaffirs discovering the place of their interment, and exhuming and desecrating their remains. The Riflemen who had acted as this patrol marched again on the 14th for the Kei river, it having been reported that it was fordable; but this proved to be a mistake, at least as far as infantry was concerned; though the cavalry had forded; not, however, without some loss. Again, therefore the Riflemen had to return and bivouack on Mount-Misery. And the rest of the Battalion was moved up to the same place. They remained here during the next three days, suffering great privations. For the swollen state of the river did not admit of supplies being brought over. In consequence, too, of a soldier of another regiment who had gone out for water having been found killed and stripped, a stringent order was issued that no men were to go for water, except in armed parties of thirty, under an officer, and accompanied by two non-commissioned officers. This water duty was exceedingly fatiguing; as the men had to go down two very steep hills into a kloof,[193] about a mile distant, and to reascend them loaded with water. Want and exposure too began to tell heavily on the men; and the seeds of much subsequent disease were to be traced to this bivouack. At last on the 18th the Riflemen marched at ten o’clock from this hill and bivouacked near the banks of the river. It had fallen sufficiently for the Commissariat to get over some stores; and the famished Riflemen on reaching their bivouack found coffee, sugar, salt, and a ration of biscuit awaiting them; and what they welcomed almost as much, tobacco; which for many days they had not had, and the want of which they had vainly tried to supply by smoking leaves of the Kaffir tea-tree dried in the sun. On the 19th the cattle were driven through the river by fifties at a time; and at two o’clock the Battalion began to ford it. The water was still deep, and the current running six or seven miles an hour. A stout rope was made fast to each bank, and reeved through three waggons placed at equal distances in the bed of the river. This made a good hand-rail for the men. But the leading files having difficulty in stemming the current, and the succeeding files crowding on them, a sort of animated dam was formed which had the effect of sending the current boiling between them; and the water, which was but little above the hips on the lower side, was dammed up nearly to the armpits on the upper. However all got over in safety except one man (Private James King) who, letting go the rope,