“_Vestigia nulla retrorsum._” To go back is weakness with all except the highest intellectual nations. We took the Transvaal, and stated that the former condition of things there should _never_ be restored! The wisdom of the first step may be a matter of opinion. The evil of the “afterwards” is another question altogether. Anyhow, our annexation of the Transvaal in 1877 had led to collision with Sekukuni, a turbulent Basuto chieftain, and at first the operations taken against him were unsuccessful, Colonel Rowland’s force, which included a company of the 13th, having to fall back to Lydenburg. During the Zulu campaign he had openly sympathised with Cetewayo, and had had frequent skirmishes with the Transvaal Boers. When, therefore, the Zulu war terminated, Sir Garnet Wolseley’s attention was turned towards this constant source of trouble, and in October 1879 he moved against the “fighting Koppie” with detachments of the 21st Royal Scots Fusiliers, 86th, and 94th, in all 1400 European troops, and 4000 native levies, to meet a force estimated at 14,000 men, strongly entrenched. The district occupied by Sekukuni lies in a bend between the junction of the Oliphant and Steelpoort rivers, and was surrounded by fortified posts. The fortress itself was naturally strong: “Its whole interior was honeycombed by nature, intersected by passage and gallery, leading into great chambers with chinks, clefts, and crannies, forming natural loopholes for musketry, and in one place there yawned an appalling chasm which had never been fathomed, and was believed to contain water at the bottom. When in the agonies of thirst on the third day of their blockade, some of Sekukuni’s people went down by means of great leather thongs tied together, none of them ever came up again; no more was heard from them.” This is a good type of the African rock-fortress. On the 28th of November the attack was made, and was fully successful, but some of the caves still held many who would not surrender, and who preferred rather to die of thirst and starvation than give up either themselves or their chief. The conduct of these warriors was chivalric in its devotion to Sekukuni, who did not surrender until the 2nd December, and was then conveyed to Pretoria. There the 4th, 58th, 80th, the 1st Dragoon Guards, and Curling’s battery paraded for a review of the largest body of regular troops yet seen in that town, and Commandant D’Arcy as well as Privates Flawn and Fitzpatrick of the 94th received the Victoria Cross. Sir Garnet Wolseley left the Transvaal with a small garrison, and, he thought, at peace.