CHAP. IX. 
THE WAR OF THE AXE, 
57 
dried, on sticks stuck in the ground on each side of the 
hut-door; inside the hut I found a musket and some 
gourds of sour milk. 
The troops soon followed, and a combined camp was 
again formed at the mission station. During the day 
Major Sutton also joined the force with a 4 commando ’ 
of Hottentots from the Kat Eiver settlement, and 
formed a separate camp on a peninsula across the 
Keiskama Eiver. 
At daylight next morning the troops took the field 
in three columns. The right, or infantry column, 
under Major Campbell, 91st Eegiment, entered the 
Amatola Mountains at the gorge of the Amatola Basin, 
with Mount MacDonald on the right, and the Seven 
Kloof Mountain on the left. The centre column con¬ 
sisted entirely of horsemen, the Cape Mounted Eifles, 
under Major Armstrong, and the Kat Eiver Burghers, 
under Major Sutton; this “-column, after crossing the 
Keiskama Eiver, climbed up one of the ridges of the 
Seven Kloof Mountain to its summit; the third column, 
under Generals Somerset and Eichardson, consisting of 
the 7th Dragoon Guards and Cape Mounted Eifles, con¬ 
tinued on under the Seven Kloof Mountain, in the 
direction of the Chumie Hoek. 
I was with the centre column; and as we reached 
the summit of the Seven Kloof Mountain we could 
hear the infantry in action in the Amatola Basin, on 
