Through Veld and Forest: An African Story

by Harry Collingwood

I was aroused from my sombre reflections by the appearance of Piet, my Hottentot after-rider, who, more prudent than myself, had approached the house with a certain measure of circumspection, and now came to report that, as in our own case, all the sheep and cattle had been driven off, and that no trace of any of the native domestics or shepherds had been found, the presumption being that they had all taken the alarm and fled, or, more likely still, had been captured and carried off as prisoners. I went the rounds of the place with him, frequently shouting the name of one or another of the servants without avail, and I finally came to the conclusion that his surmise was probably correct.

And now arose the question, what was I to do? My plight was almost as desperate as it could well be; for not only was I utterly bereft of every one of those who were nearest and dearest to me, but I was likewise homeless, and literally penniless. The house which I called home was destroyed; every horn and hoof of my father’s stock had been stolen, and would probably never be recovered; and as to money, there was none, for my father, instead of banking the profits of the farm and allowing them to accumulate, had, as I have already explained, habitually spent them in improving the live stock, or adding to the adornments of the house, and the contents of the wagon which I had brought up from Port Elizabeth represented every penny of spare cash remaining in the house when I left it on my journey. True, I had the wagon and its contents, as well as the team of oxen, upon which I could doubtless realise; also there was the farm—that is to say, the land—itself, which was worth quite a handsome sum of money: but I was most unwilling to part with this for several reasons; and, had I been ever so anxious to sell, it would most probably have proved impossible to find a purchaser at that moment, with the natives in armed revolt against the whites.

But there were other matters of an even more pressing character than those just enumerated demanding my attention, and the first of these was the interment of the body of my unfortunate friend, Nell’s father. Therefore, summoning Piet, I bade him seek a shovel; and when he had found one I set him to work to dig a grave at a certain spot about a quarter of a mile from the house, which I knew to be greatly favoured by Nell on account of the beautiful view obtainable from it: and there Piet and I reverently laid the dead man to rest, afterward piling a number of large stones round the grave, and placing a rough wooden cross at its head to mark the spot. Then, recovering our horses, we returned to Bella Vista, and, thoroughly worn out by the fatigue and horror of the past day, I sought rest in the outspanned wagon.

Next morning, with a grief so bitter that even now I cannot look back upon it unmoved, I chose another site for a grave and laid my beloved dead to rest side by side, marking the spot as I had marked the grave of Nell’s father; leaving the remains of the savages to be dealt with by the vultures, hyenas, and jackals. And when I had done all that was possible the wagon was inspanned, and with a heavy heart I wended my way, accompanied by my little following, to Somerset East, where I arrived late in the afternoon of the following day without having encountered anything of an untoward character on my way. There was but one farm between Bella Vista and Somerset East, situate about halfway between the latter and the Great Fish River, and when in the course of my journey the house came in sight, I jumped on Prince’s back and galloped forward, with the view of ascertaining what, if anything, had happened there. But upon my arrival I found the farm silent and deserted, with not so much as a dog about the place. The house, however, was undamaged, all the doors and windows were fastened, and upon looking through the latter I perceived that the rooms were empty of furniture; I therefore concluded—which afterwards proved to be the case—that the owner had obtained timely warning of the rising, had hurriedly packed all his belongings into wagons, and, driving his stock before him, had hastily retired to Somerset East.

The town of Somerset East was in a terrible commotion when I reached it, some fifty fugitive families from the outlying districts, with their stock and belongings, having already taken shelter there, while others were hourly arriving; and every man had a story to tell of some farm that had been attacked, its inhabitants murdered, and its stock driven off. Something very nearly approaching to a state of panic prevailed, for the town at that time contained only some three hundred inhabitants, of whom three-quarters were women and children; moreover, it lay quite open and unprotected on every side, and might easily be rushed by a sufficiently strong body of the enemy. But there were a few cool heads among those congregated in the town, one notable being a certain Major Henderson, who, like my father, had held a post in the British army, and who at once naturally came to the front and took the lead in preparing the place to meet successfully a possible attack.

A laager, consisting of wagons interlocked, was constructed at each end of the single street that then ran through the town; the inner ends of the narrow lanes giving off the main street were securely barricaded, thus forming a number of culs-de-sac in which, if the attacking savages dared to venture there, they would be swept out of existence by the defenders behind the barricades; and every back door and window of every house accessible from the veld was strongly protected by heavy timber and loopholed for rifle fire: thus when Henderson’s scheme of defence was complete the town presented a very tough nut to crack for an enemy without artillery or firearms. The greatest difficulty, it appeared, was the shortness of ammunition, consequently my arrival with a wagon-load of the commodity was regarded as scarcely less than a special interposition of Providence. Then the male inhabitants voluntarily placed themselves under martial law, under Henderson’s command, taking it in turns to perform sentry-go day and night; while the best mounted among us undertook to act as scouts, riding forth from the town daily in various directions in quest of news of the enemy, and returning in the evening with such intelligence as we had been able to gain. This daily scouting service proved to be of the utmost value, for in the first place it prevented the possibility of a surprise attack, and so enabled the stock congregated in the town to be daily driven forth to graze and water; and it also was the means whereby in the course of a few days we were able to gather something like a clear general idea of what had happened and was still happening in the colony.

Thus it soon transpired that, in the eastern provinces, an imaginary line drawn from the mouth of the Great Kei River through Triannon and Bella Vista, and thence northward along the meridian of 26 degrees east longitude to the Zour Bergen, represented the southern limit of the savages’ depredations; while beyond the Zour Bergen, to the north and west, we were unable to learn anything definite. On the fifth day after my arrival in Somerset East a detachment consisting of two companies of infantry, accompanied by baggage and ammunition wagons, under the command of a Captain Fletcher, arrived from Port Elizabeth, and encamped within half a mile of the town in an excellent strategic position, which they at once proceeded to entrench strongly; and there they remained nearly a week, awaiting instructions from their general, who was preparing a plan of campaign while moving toward the centre of disturbance the few troops at his disposal, and collecting information.

During the week that followed the arrival of the troops we received intelligence of several attacks upon isolated farms, and even small villages, in the outlying and more sparsely populated districts; from which it speedily became apparent that the regular troops, consisting, as they did, entirely of infantry, and hampered, as they were, by their baggage wagons, were altogether too slow-moving to be effective in overtaking and bringing to action the nimble bodies of savages, who were encumbered with no impedimenta of any description whatsoever excepting their weapons—a shield, knobkerrie, and sheaf of assagais; who slept under the stars, quenched their thirst at every stream or runlet that crossed their path, and eat whatever came to hand, whether it chanced to be buck, bullock, or green mealies.

Therefore it seemed, upon careful consideration of the situation, that if the ravages of the blacks were to be stopped there was only one course to be pursued, and that was to dispatch against them a force of irregular cavalry composed of farmers, hunters, transport riders, and others, men who had lived long enough in the country to become inured to the climate and accustomed to the methods of travel in it, who could move as independently of impedimenta as the savages themselves, and, being mounted, as swiftly, and who, being provided with firearms, might hope to cope successfully with a foe considerably stronger in point of numbers than themselves. And there were plenty of such men to be had—farmers who had fled from their farms to the towns and villages upon the first news of the outbreak, transport riders whose occupation had ceased upon the outbreak of hostilities, hunters who were in like case with the transport riders, and a few who, like myself, had lost everything but life itself at the hands of the savages; and we speedily banded ourselves into troops, in some cases numbering not more than twenty or thirty, in others amounting to a hundred or more, each band under its own elected leader and subordinate officers. The corps to which I attached myself—and which dubbed itself the Somerset East Mounted Rifles—consisted of one hundred and seven men under the command of Major Henderson, divided into two troops of fifty men each—the right troop under the command of “Captain” Henry Jackson, and the left troop under the command of “Captain” Pieter Van Rhyn, with a sergeant in command of each of the two squadrons which composed a troop.

Each man provided his own horse, weapons, and ammunition; we were not in uniform, and were volunteers in the strictest sense of the word, for we drew no pay, and acknowledged allegiance to no man save our own officers, although it was of course fully understood by everybody that we were always to be ready to co-operate with and support the regular troops in the event of our encountering any. This, however, was exceedingly unlikely, at least in the earlier stages of the campaign, for so lightly equipped were we that we could perform forty-mile marches day after day with ease, and were confident that we could not only get into touch with, but could also reduce the enemy to subjection, long before the regulars could arrive at the scene of hostilities. And although we did not substantiate our boast or achieve our ambition in its entirety, I think I am justified in claiming that the honours of the campaign fell chiefly to the various bodies of irregulars who so self-sacrificingly took the field on that occasion; for it was we, and not the regulars, who followed up and hunted down so relentlessly the marauding bands of savages who swept the colony like a storm wave, causing such a loss of life and property as it took the colonists the best part of a generation to recover from.