First, we shelled the front of it, where the main kraal was situated, until the rebels evacuated this point, and made their way to the back of the mountain. A flanking patrol of ours to the right was suddenly attacked by a strong party of the enemy, but the patrol held its own well, and extricated itself cleverly from the difficult ground it was in, without any casualties, having killed five of the enemy.
A Chance Shot
While investigating Inyanda’s stronghold after its capture, Captain Lloyd, our signalling officer, was struck by a chance shot through the leg. We found here a great store of grain packed in huge grass–woven baskets and stowed in the driest parts of the caves—as above shown.
On the left we worked round through the bush to the rear face of the mountain. Here were the caves which formed the grain–stores of the rebels, and after shelling these for a short time, we sent up parties to capture them. The enemy made no attempt to hold the place, but had retired over the back of the mountain by the time our men had got up to the caves; but one of them, firing a parting shot, wounded Captain Lloyd, our signalling officer, through the lower part of the thigh. Once more my pocket–case of bandages came in useful, as there was no medical officer up there with us, but the wound was not a serious one. We found very large stores of grain here, packed in immense neatly–woven grass baskets made with a small mouth which was sealed up with mortar; there were mealies (maize), inyaooti (Kaffir corn), monkey–nuts, rice, dried melons, and Mahoba–hoba fruit, etc., these were all stored in large, dry caves, of which the entrances had been stockaded. We found many cooking–pots, shields, assegais, clothes, and even children’s dolls; these latter were merely little clay models of bodies with short arms and legs, but no heads, and these are said to be of precisely the same pattern as the dolls of the ancients which have been excavated in some of the old ruins of the country.
From Inyanda’s we moved on to the spot where I had formerly located Sikombo’s impi. This we found deserted, but the size and extent of the scherms still standing there showed that at least two thousand men must have been lately in camp in them. We burned these, and, continuing our march through the hills for another mile or two eastward, we came out on the Tuli road just at the spot where it enters the Matopo Pass.