COMBAT OF THE 26TH OF OCTOBER. 373 rifles, discharged by men in the brushwood, be- chap. gan to raise an alert, and the picket then moving ' at once into extended order became engaged be- fore long with the enemy's skirmishers * Upon the His engage- ° J *■ mentwith right of this picket Colonel Federoff after a while our pickets ° *• _ and con- began to press forward in strength : and, to avoid tinued ad- o r o ■> vance to being cut off, the 49th men fell back by degrees 8heU HU1 - — fighting hard nevertheless all the time — to one of the spurs in their rear. There, with the other companies afterwards aiding them, they maintained a vehement combat — a combat which stopped the assailants in that western part of the field. Upon learning that the picket of the 49th was engaged, Major Champion — the ' field-officer of ' the day ' commanding the 1st Brigade pickets — sent forward three of his companies — each one of them about sixty strong — with orders to extend under the brow of Shell Hill, and there await the attack which was to be expected so soon as the picket of the 49th should be forced back. That event, as we saw, occurred after some lapse of time, and Champion's three companies being then face to face with the enemy engaged him in ob- stinate combat, whilst moreover, some men under
- Although Colonel Federoff's advance could not for some
time be seen by the troops he undertook to attack, it was plainly visible to our people on the Victoria Ridge, and, so far as re- gards the early stages of the operation, I entirely owe my means of tracing them to an admirable description furnished me by the kindness of an officer there posted, namely Colonel Hibbert (late of the 7th Royal Fusiliers), who watched the movement with grout care from across the Careenage Ravine. The movement was reported to General Codrington and (through him, I be- lieve) to Evans.
