The latest intelligence from the Cape shows that the Govern-
ment is thoroughly alarmed, for it is calling out the burghers— the Dutch farmers—by thousands at a time. The Premier reports slight successes over the Basutos ; but the Burritos an)
not yielding, and the letters which begin to arrive show them to be formidable fighters. In one published in the Timm, Captain Shervinton, of the Cape Mounted Rifles, at Mafeteng, says the enemy " rained bullets " on them, and " he never expected to get out with a single man ;" the enemy " are better armed than we are, having Martini-Henry and Westley-Richards rifles," while they are excellently mounted. " You can hardly imagine the pace these fellows can go on their ponies—up and down hill, over rocks, at a break-neck pace—our horses are not in it with them ; so you can fancy how I felt, surrounded by 1,200 of these light cavalry, in a place that only one horse could be dragged down at a time." The Basutos lose men in heaps, but carry off their wounded so daringly that if they were English, " V.C.'s would be common with them." In one place fifty horses lay dead, with only three "bodies "—i.e., human bodies— among them. Men of this stamp should have been armed and disciplined as auxiliaries, and paid in land grants, not driven into rebellion by seeking to take away their arms.
