e sufferings of our wounded after the battle of Ingogo
must have been. Those who survived were next day taken to the hospital
at Newcastle.

What Sir George Colley's real object was in exposing himself to the
attack has never transpired. It can hardly have been to clear the road,
as he says in his despatch, because the road was not held by the enemy,
but only visited occasionally by their patrols. The result of the battle
was to make the Boers, whose losses were trifling, more confident than
ever, and to greatly depress our soldiers. Sir George had now lost
between three and four hundred men, out of his column of little over
a thousand, which was thereby entirely crippled. Of his staff Officers
Major Essex now alone survived, his usual good fortune having carried
him safe through the battle of Ingogo. What makes his repeated escapes
the more remarkable is that he was generally to be found in the heaviest
firing. A man so fortunate as Major Essex ought to be rewarded for his
good fortune if for no other reason, though, if reports are true,
there would be no need to fall back on that to find grounds on which to
advance a soldier who has always borne himself so well.

Another result of the Ingogo battle was that the Boers, knowing that we
had no force to cut them off, and always secure of a retreat into
the Free State, passed round Newcastle in Free State Territory, and
descended from fifteen hundred to two thousand strong into Natal for the
purpose of destroying the reinforcements which were now on their way up
under General Wood. This was on the 11th of February, and from that date
till the 18th, the upper districts of Natal were in the hands of the
enemy, who cut the telegraph wires, looted waggons, stole herds of
cattle and horses, and otherwise amused themselves at the expense of Her
Majesty's subjects in Natal.

It was a very anxious time for those who knew what Boers are capable of,
and had women and children to protect, and who were never sure if their
houses would be left standing over their heads from one day to another.

Every night we were obliged to place out Kafirs as scouts to give us
timely warning of the approach of marauding parties, and to sleep with
loaded rifles close to our hands, and sometimes, when things looked very
black, in our clothes, with horses ready saddled in the stable. Nor were
our fears groundless, for one day a patrol of some five hundred Boers
encamped on the next place, which by th