190 ADVENTURES IN SOUTH AFRICA. 



A party of artillery and a detachment of the 7th 

 Dragoon Guards were reported en rovte from Fort 

 Beaufort, to assist the 91st in their operations against 

 the Boers. Skirmishes were daily occurring between 

 the belligerents on the opposite side, and expresses from 

 Adam Kok were continually arriving in camp, solicit- 

 ing assistance. The manner in which these skirmish- 

 es were conducted w^as very amusing, and illustrative 

 of the high courage of the contending parties. Every 

 day, having breakfasted, the Boers and Bastards w'ere 

 in the habit of meeting and peppering away at one an- 

 other till the afternoon, when each party returned to its 

 respective encampment. The distance at which they 

 stood from one another might be somewhere above a 

 couple of miles, and they fired at one another peeping 

 over ranges of coppice or low rocky hills, while large 

 herds of springboks and wildebeests kept quietly pas- 

 turing on the goreless field of battle between them. 



Some of these neutrals, I was informed, occasionally 

 fell before the hissing balls of the redoubted warriors. 

 Before dismissing the subject of the rebellion of '45, I 

 may state that soon after this, the 91st and Cape Corps 

 men being re-enforced w'ith a party of artillery and a 

 detachment of the 7th Dragoon Guards, they crossed 

 the Orange River, and advanced upon the Boers' posi- 

 tion by forced marches, when the Boers were charged 

 by the dragoons and put to flight, and their wagons 

 and commissariat fell into our hands. On this occasion 

 the Boers had two pieces of ordnance, of which they 

 were supposed to have obtained possession some years 

 previously at Port Natal. Over one of these presided 

 a Frenchman of low stature; and while little jMonsieur 

 was actively employed in ramming down one of their 

 home-made balls, which were constructed of lead, a 



