Day after day bringing worse accounts of families
murdered, women carried off, and the quantity of
men General Vandeleur was possessed of becoming
equally inadequate for an offensive or defensive war,

Q



226 SOUTH AFEICA A CENTUBY AGO

he being also at one time cut off from his main body,
General Dundas declared he would ' go himself and
finish the business one way or another.' But in
what manner^ I fancy he does not thoroughly know.
The orders which followed his departure for moxe
troops to be sent (300) were countermanded the day
after, and this day re-ordered, another field-piece ajid
130 men being this morning sent. Mr. Bamard
most anxiously ventured to recommend him to take
with him some respectable persons understand-
ing the languages of the country, and likely to be
clever at negotiation, but the General said Aber-
crombie and M'Nab were sufficient ; I hope he will
find them so. I have heard he has since been joined
by some person better calculated for such measures,
and T hope it is so.
i presume Mr. Bamard will transmit to you the
General's own accounts of what has passed since
his departure, collected from his letters to Mr. Boss.^
The only letter Mr. Bamard has had was to desire
him to communicate to you the situation of things —
a painful enough task, and one that Mr. Bamard
regrets he must perform in a manner so very
inadequate to what you must naturally expect from
the situation he fills here. But he cannot help it.
The General, I am grieved to say, neither consults
him, nor permits any of his opinions to be advanced^

* Mr. Hercules Boss had acted as Secretary under General Craig.
