push on to the river. The patrol accordingly proceeded on for about four miles, where for some distance the way was along the bottom of a deep sandy nullah with very precipitous sides, which they were forced to take as the only practicable place. This at length debouched into an open space, from which there appeared to be an entrance to a disused kraal some two miles up the ravine. Here the escort found that there was good drinking-water in some pools under a large kopje in front, situated in a complete amphitheatre of hills, and upon this kopje were some of our Basuto skirmishers. After watering the horses, the party advanced for a mile and a half along a commanding and rocky range of hills a short distance beyond the Ilyotosi river. Here Carey again proposed to off-saddle, but the Prince did not approve of the spot, and after some more sketching and surveying the country with telescopes and compass, the valley was descended as far as an isolated kraal, and the order was given to off-saddle. The Prince, who did not appear very strong, now complained of being tired, and while coffee was being prepared lay down beside the door of a hut. The place where this halt was made would appear, from the statements of Lieutenant Carey and the surviving men of the escort, to be about as ill-chosen and suspicious a locality as could be found. The kraal where they now were consisted of about half a dozen huts, and was situated about three hundred yards from the river Moazani (so called by the Zulu who accompanied the party). Between the kraal and the river stretched a tall and luxuriant growth of that most dangerous cover, five, six, and seven feet in height, Tambookie grass interspersed here and there, as is customary, with equally tall mealies and Kaffir corn. The plains beneath this spot afforded every temptation to the artistic eye of the Prince, and here again another sketch of the panorama was quickly made. The bright glowing tints of the foreground, whose colours were lit up by green and fresh grass and wide-spreading acacia and flowering shrubs, well mellowed away in the middle distance, while far away towards the horizon were to be seen the shadowy outlines of the blue Itelezi hills. The kraal was not completely surrounded, for in front there was an open space where broken cooking utensils and burnt-out embers, bones, and other _débris_, showed that the place had not long ago been occupied. Some hungry-looking dogs came out and snarled at the intruders. Here the fatal order was given to off-saddle, and, in defiance of the most common and ordinary precautions, which the merest tyro should have taken, the horses were knee-haltered and turned out to graze, while coffee was prepared, and not the slightest search made in the cover around.