Part 2, Chapter XII.
Sufferings of the Settlers.
“Another year has opened its pages in the book of life, and the record of the Kaffir war promises nothing in the shape of peace. Our enemy, instead of being subdued, appears more obstinate than ever, and deeply intent on every device that can thwart our purpose and forward his own.
“When the Kaffirs first began to make concessions, I was of opinion that they were willing to submit to any terms at the moment, in order to gain time to plant and reap. The result has been what every one experienced in the Kaffir character ought to have anticipated. We have dealt too mercifully with the treacherous and cruel foe; cruel he is by nature; witness his brutality even among those of his own colour, nay, his own blood. Some say he is not cowardly; it is certain he meets death at the last moment calmly, and he has a peculiar pride in bearing pain and annoyance at all times with apparent indifference. A Kaffir will not raise his hand to remove a fly from his face; and, as he rubs his skin with clay and grease to protect it from the effects of the sun, these attract the flies, and I have known a savage sit for hours in the sun with his cheeks and brow covered by these tormenting and fidgetty insects, without attempting to remove them. It must be allowed, though, that a Kaffir skin more resembles the hide of some powerful animal than the skin of a human being. In the early part of this war, some person procured the entire skin of a Kaffir, and had it treated in the same way that leather is first prepared for tanning. I am told that the texture is at least three times the thickness of a white man’s, and I see no reason for doubting the assertion.
“The Kaffir has neither generosity nor gratitude, which are invariably the attributes of a brave nature; he will not meet his adversary openly, unless he has the advantage immensely in numbers, as in Captain Sandes’s case. When there are some thousands, to one helpless or unarmed man, they will annihilate him without mercy. The Kaffir has no genuine pride, for he will submit to any personal degradation to obtain his ends; in short, he is an ignoble foe, and we gain no more credit, or profit, in fighting such an enemy than if we were endeavouring to circumvent an army of baboons. The Kaffir warriors move from kloof to kloof, from drift to drift, with their provisions in their pouches, or deposited at certain distances in the bush, while their women contrive to support themselves in the neighbourhood of the British camp, making occasional excursions to see their relatives in the field, to furnish them with useful intelligence and gunpowder. Where the latter is obtained is, professedly, a mystery! The resources of the Colony present temptations to those who have long lived by trading in the country beyond the Kei; and, although provisions have not been forwarded along the coast, small vessels have made their way to the mouths of the rivers between Waterloo Bay and Natal. A report, founded on good grounds, is abroad, that the Kaffir women have lately been employed in conveying ammunition to their friends, by means of pack-oxen, from Algoa Bay to the interior of Kaffirland, right through the Colony. This is by no means improbable, when the territory is so vast, and the population scattered, and comparatively small.
“There is little doubt that the Resident Agent at Block Drift now sees the uselessness of endeavouring to carry out the late arrangements of Government with regard to ‘British Kaffraria.’ How he ever supposed such measures could succeed must remain a puzzle to all acquainted with the Kaffir’s nature! ‘I beseech you by the meekness and gentleness of Christ,’ is an appeal which the South African savage, in his present state, cannot be brought to understand.
“January 6th.—We have the old story from the field; the troops have been patrolling, and have rescued two thousand head of cattle from the I’Slambies. The 6th, under the command of Colonel Michell, have had their share in this foray. Much sickness continues to prevail. The cunning Páto has again succeeded in eluding pursuit, although Colonel Somerset hemmed him in. The gallant Colonel, while moving through a mist with a party of troops, came suddenly on his enemy. The surprise of seeing Páto’s panther-like face, as the gloom cleared for an instant, elicited an exclamation from Colonel Somerset, as he drew his pistol from his holster, and Páto escaped into the bush ere the shot could take effect. At the time the despatches were written, only one part of the troops had crossed the Kei, and our private letters mention that the rivers were rising fast. Those who were on the eastern bank, had only a few days’ provisions with them, and they may be cut off from all communication with the troops on this side for two or three weeks.
“News from England.—Orders have been received to this effect:—the 27th, 90th, and 91st Regiments are to embark for England immediately, if they can possibly be spared. The 90th are to march to Graham’s Town at once, and onward to the coast. I despair of our removal with the 91st. Sir Henry Pottinger is daily expected on the frontier. The 27th and 91st Regiments will no doubt be detained till his arrival, and what his movements may be it is impossible to know.”
On the 12th of January, Sir Peregrine Maitland arrived at Graham’s Town, from the frontier, on his way to Cape Town, bringing with him the intelligence that two thousand head of fine cattle had been captured across the Kei by Colonel Somerset’s division; this was a second recapture in less than a fortnight, and under considerable difficulties. But the grand capture, of six thousand head, was made afterwards, and on the 17th of January, Colonel Somerset crossed the Kei at the imminent peril of his life, but the patrol, with all the cattle, were unable to ford the stream, which was still rising with such force that nothing could stand against the torrent. All provisions and supplies were cut off, and the troops had nothing but a few mealies (Indian corn) to subsist on. Three men were drowned on the morning of the 15th: Serjeant-Major Ritchie, 7th Dragoon Guards, and two of the Cape Corps: and Mr Allen, Assistant-Surgeon of the Cape Corps, was only saved by disengaging himself from his horse and swimming ashore.
The command of the troops on the frontier now devolved on Colonel Somerset, until the arrival of General Berkeley. The efficiency of the Colonel for such a command has been fully proved during this long and harassing war.
On the 19th of January the force made its way across the Kei, with eight thousand head of cattle, captured in Kreli’s country. The Kaffirs hung upon the rear, disputing each drift and passage with the troops. In crossing the Kei, a serjeant of the 6th, and a private of the Cape Mounted Rifles, were shot by the enemy.
Having recaptured so much cattle, Colonel Somerset now determined to fall back towards the Colony, and on the 19th he issued an order, warning those in command of posts and divisions, to be as vigilant as ever in their observations of the enemy’s movements, as hostilities had not ceased.
Meanwhile, sickness prevailed among the troops in the field and still increasing. Rheumatism, camp-fever, and dysentery, reduced the subject of them to a deplorable state of debility, and it was melancholy to see young men, who had been scarcely three months in the Colony, brought to positive decrepitude from these sufferings.
“February 6th.—The 91st are under orders to proceed from Fort Peddie to Graham’s Town, for the purpose of preparing for embarkation for home.
“The ‘Thunderbolt’ steamer, having on board Her Majesty’s Commissioner, Sir Henry Pottinger, and Lieutenant-General Berkeley, the Commander of the Forces; in rounding Cape Recife, on the 3rd of February, struck upon a sunken rock, sprung a leak, and it is feared will go to pieces with the first south-easter. The disappointment of the 90th, who were waiting at Algoa Bay for this vessel to convey them to Cape Town for final embarkation, may be will imagined. The old soldiers who stood eagerly watching her approach, set up a universal shout as they saw her coming round. What must have been their feelings when they beheld her run right ashore?
“The appearance of the 90th on leaving the Colony is so totally different to what it presented on its arrival here, that it goes far to prove the good effect of the Cape climate on constitutions debilitated by Indian service. Under every disadvantage of fatigue, privation, and a residence under canvas during an African summer, with the thermometer at times 157 degrees in the open air, the 90th, on their march from Graham’s Town to the coast, presented a perfect picture of a regiment of British veterans.
“We lately saw them in our evening ride, as they toiled up a steep hill before us with their long line of waggons and dusky waggon-drivers. How cheerful they looked! I envied them as I turned my horse’s head back to the land of banishment and anxiety! I could not help uttering the words, ‘Happy 90th, God speed you!’ aloud, as the last waggon passed us, and an old soldier, with a bronzed cheek and grey hair, saluted our party, by way of ‘Thank you for your good will!’ How little they anticipated their disappointment at Algoa Bay!”
It is not long since we rode a few miles on the Fort Beaufort road to see the cattle that had been captured by Colonel Somerset’s division across the Kei. We reached the bivouac just as the sun was declining. The cattle, seven thousand in number, were gathered into a dense mass, and surrounded by their guards. I never see a poor patient-looking Cape ox, that I do not think of the strife continually existing here for the sake of its race. The mass of cattle was a Smithfield show; but the tents round it—the huts contrived to hold one person—being a few bushes and a piece of tattered canvas, the fires where the Hottentots and their vrouws cooked their suppers, the piled muskets, the picquets and scouts turning out for the night, and the pack-oxen, apart from their fellows, and so tame as to be pets and playmates of the boys who watched them, presented an extraordinary sight, particularly in that strange light between the setting of the sun and the reign of the moon. This crowd of cattle had been brought into the Colony with great speed and security, by the levy in command of Captain Hogg, 7th Dragoon Guards; and, as was anticipated, the enemy followed them, in various parties, through the different passes between Kaffirland and our own territory. Fortunately, Captain Hogg and his people had been too swift and careful in their movements to be circumvented even by Kaffirs, and the cattle was distributed to the farmers without delay.
We took another ride one day, which created sad sensations. Above the Drostdy barracks, on the western side of Graham’s Town, is a succession of hills and undulating plains. We chose our path along the open ground, being a vast irregular space, evidently very fertile, for the turf was gay with beautiful wild flowers. Gigantic mountains, piled one above the other, formed the background of this noble amphitheatre. Here and there a hill was clothed in patches of deep green, and on its summit waved a few small trees, but there was no dense bush, and two or three farms dotted the plains, many miles in extent.
“These farms have probably been secure from the Kaffirs during the war,” said I.
We reached one of them. Although it had escaped the brand of the savage, it looked desolate. The owners had only returned within a few days. They had not deserted it till the last moment; their cattle had been stolen and their herds wounded, their land was untilled, and the little watercourse was choked with rubbish. We passed on to the farm a short distance beyond it. The settlers, a man and his wife, perfectly English in appearance, but pale and harassed, stood surveying their miserable homestead. This, too, from its open position, had escaped the brand; but the windows were shattered, the door swung on imperfect hinges, the steps were broken and grass grew between them; the little garden laid waste; and, as if in mockery, a scarlet geranium streamed garishly over the crumbling embankment; rank weeds filled the place of other plants under the broken boughs of the apricot trees, and a few poor articles of furniture which had been borne away to Graham’s Town, on the family flitting, stood in the open air, awaiting more strength than the exhausted mistress of the place could command. Her husband had been trying to bring a piece of ground into some sort of cultivation, but it was heavy work; the long droughts had parched the earth, and the mimosa fence was scattered over the face of the patch, which had once yielded vegetables.
We asked them if they, too, had lost their cattle? The man smiled, as he said, “Yes;” he seemed amused at our supposing it could have escaped the hands of the robber. The woman sighed, and answered that two of her herds had been killed, and her son had had a narrow escape of being shot. “We did not like to stay after that, Ma’am,” said she, “and we have been many months in Graham’s Town. I’m sure I don’t think we are safe now, in spite of all the fresh soldiers we’ve got in the country,” she continued, casting a frightened glance towards the gloomy mountains behind the homestead, “but we are all ruined, and things can’t be much worse, so we may as well take our chance.”
The colonists, who are the best judges of the benefits conferred on them by Colonel Somerset’s exertions in their behalf, have come forward to bestow a solid testimony of their gratitude towards him, by setting on foot a subscription for the purchase of a piece of plate, setting forth that “The inhabitants of Albany, impressed with the great service rendered them by Colonel Somerset during the Kaffir war, by his rapid march from Block Drift into Lower Albany and other parts of the district, thereby relieving the inhabitants from imminent danger, and in some cases from almost certain destruction, from the wrathful hands of an invading enemy, and further for his services rendered to the Colony in general by his great exertions in the field, it is proposed to present him with a piece of plate, as a mark of their esteem and gratitude.”
The march alluded to, of such importance to the safety and he lives of the unfortunate settlers, was “made on his own responsibility.” By this “forced march,” says the Graham’s Town Journal, February 13th, 1847, “Colonel Somerset saved Theopolis, Farmerfield, Salem, Bathurst, and other places in Lower Albany, from probable destruction.”
On the departure of his Excellency Sir Peregrine Maitland from the frontier, the troops fell back from the Kei to the Buffalo, where Colonel Van der Meulen assumed the command of a division, consisting of four companies of the Rifle Brigade, beside his own regiment, the 73rd, two guns, seventy Cape Corps, a squadron of the 7th Dragoon Guards, and a chequered group of Provisionals. This division encamped amid the ruins of what once promised to be a flourishing town, named by Sir Harry Smith, King William’s Town; the site having been taken possession of by him in the name of William the Fourth, in 1835; but it was subsequently abandoned.
Here, then, among these memorials of the last war, the troops are building huts and bowers for themselves. The heat is intolerable. The walls of Sir Harry Smith’s abode are still standing, and the old garden contains some excellent fruit trees, planted probably under the direction of Lady Smith, the interesting Spanish heroine of some charming sketches of the Peninsula, and the favourite of the African frontier. Lady Smith, of kindly memory, would live in the hearts of those who knew her, even were she not connected with one of the heroes of the late conquests in India.
Fort Peddie has been strengthened, and is now the head-quarters of the 6th Regiment, under Lieutenant-Colonel Michel. Besides the 6th, Colonel Michel has at his disposal a troop of Dragoons, a party of the Cape Corps, and some companies of the Rifle Brigade.
The 91st are scattered far and wide at outposts and bivouacs. The light company, under Captain Savage, are in Colonel Michel’s district, patrolling between Post Victoria (abandoned and resumed within eight months) and Fort Peddie. The Grenadiers, under Captain Ward, are on their march to the neighbourhood of Hell’s Poort, to intercept cattle-lifters. The levies have been dismissed, or dispersed of their own accord; the flank companies of Her Majesty’s 91st are employed in their stead!
The Beaufort Division is under the command of Lieutenant-Colonel Johnstone, 27th Regiment, and consists of the 45th Regiment, under Lieutenant-Colonel Erskine; the reserve battalion 91st, under Lieutenant-Colonel Campbell; 7th Dragoon Guards, under Lieutenant-Colonel Richardson, and a Burgher Force, under Major Sutton, Cape Mounted Rifles.