Mountains of loftier altitude, rising peak upon peak, tier upon tier, and range upon range, met the eye everywhere. Green trees covered their slopes in apparently endless expanse of vegetation. Immediately behind the Lancer camp, and sheltering it from the night breezes that swept across the plain, was a massive buttress of rock covered with richly and delicately-hued velvety mosses, while down the hard, steep, rocky beds of granite and sandstone, with here and there basalt and porphyry, flint and quartz, foamed sparkling little streams, which always seem so refreshing and so tempting on a South African march. A deep gaping fissure in a high jutting wall of rock, through which bubbled the clear water in volumes; a great towering rock with perpendicular walls, to which clung, in spite of apparent impossibility, ferns and plants and moss, thick and velvety; and a huge conical hill which ambitiously hid its head in the clouds; these were wild and rugged forms of nature to be treasured up long after their marching days were gone and past. The camp was situated on a wide terrace or shelf of ground rising above a body of water, which more resembled a long narrow lake than a river. This part of the White Umvolosi, indeed, like many other African rivers, loses its current in the dry season, and becomes a series of long narrow pools, which in some places may be compared to lakes for their length, according to the nature of the ground in which depressions are found. If the ground is rocky or of clayey mud the water is retained, instead of being absorbed, and here swarm multitudes of silurus, or bearded mud-fish. Wherever mud-fish are abundant, crocodiles, the great fish-eating reptiles of the African waters, are sure to be found, and, singularly enough, wherever crocodiles are found one is almost sure to find the hippopotamus--not because crocodiles and hippopotami have any affinity for each other, but because the soil which retains the water during the hot days of the drought season is almost sure to produce in the vicinity of the pools abundance of rich grass and tall cane, the favourite food of the hippopotamus. Two miles further in the plain Wood's bivouac fires were seen in glittering and regular ranks, marking out the exact ground which each regiment or corps would occupy in order of parade or march. Far away, but in a line with each angle of the bivouac, were the outlying pickets; while, again, beyond these were those vigilant and unsleeping patrols which made this column so secure and impossible to surprise.