Considering the state of utter demoralization in which our troops had apparently fallen at the time, the Boers having been victorious in every engagement of the campaign, all Englishmen may be glad that a sudden mist stopped the attack upon our camp at Mount Prospect, which General Smit told me the Boers had decided to make, or a yet more disastrous defeat would, I feel certain, have been chronicled. I was strongly impressed with the belief that General Joubert recognized a divine Providence in everything, as over and over again he said, “the hand of God was in it all.” I was also informed that when this sudden mist arose, hiding our camp completely from view, that he quietly said: “Look at the mist, the Lord won’t allow us to go;” seemingly, like Cromwell, he was a firm believer in the universality of divine interposition and so accepted the sudden mist as a command of the Deity! “Thus far shalt thou go and no further.”
General Joubert’s description of his interview with Gen. Sir Evelyn Wood, five days after Majuba, was very graphic. I asked the general to allow me to take notes, to which he consented—when lighting his pipe he began: “You must know, doctor, that five days after the fight General Wood sent to ask me if I would meet him half-way between the two camps. This I agreed to do, and we sent wagons and tents from both sides. There were myself, General Smit and Mr. Dirkhouse, as clerk on our side, and General Wood, General Buller and Major Fraser on the English. When I arrived, after wishing each other ‘good morning,’ General Wood asked me: ‘Have you authority to make peace?’ I answered, ‘Yes, on one condition;’ he said, ‘what is that?’ I replied, ‘the annexation of our country to be withdrawn.’ ‘Then,’ I added, ‘her Majesty’s troops can leave with honor, I want no more.’ ‘But if I sign such a peace, will all agree?’ inquired the general. ‘Yes,’ said I, ‘all must in accordance with our law.’ After some moments’ deliberation General Wood asked me whether or not I would make peace according to the terms offered in a letter sent by Mr. Kruger to General Colley through President Brand. I answered distinctly, ‘No.’ At last General Wood begged that the armistice might be extended to twenty days to give Mr. Kruger time to arrange about terms, when, after discussing the matter for some time, a further cessation of hostilities for eight days was agreed upon between us, and we left Buller and Fraser to draw up a document to that effect.
“As we were standing outside the tent while this document was being prepared, General Wood told me I should have to get away from the Nek, because it was English territory, but I said: ‘We don’t fight for ground, we don’t claim any; why should I go? If you mean to make peace, the closer we get the better.’ General Wood replied, ‘I shall have to force the place then and drive you away,’ and pointing to his breast, and counting his medals one after the other, said: ‘Look, there are one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine medals, and if I pitch you out, another, which will make ten.’ I answered: ‘I must defend my country at all risks, and stand the consequences,’ He then looked straight at me and said: ‘Perchance you may kill me, but that is nothing; England has sixteen generals more.’ I then turned up my coat, and pointing to my breast, which was perfectly plain, said: ‘General, there is nothing here, and thank God, I want nothing behind that Nek there. I have not one single man to be killed for that. (I pointed to a medal on his breast.) We do not fight for glory, we fight for liberty, and for liberty every English general, I know, would also yield his life. We have not many generals, but although I and General Smit lead our men, each man knows he fights for himself and his country.’ General Wood then continued: ‘But what do you think of Colley going up the mountain?’ I answered: ‘I don’t know what to think; all I know is that I received letters from Brand and Colley only the day before, which tended to throw me off my guard, and while I was in the very act of writing answers Colley took the opportunity to go up the mountain.’ ‘And you drove him down?’ ‘I don’t say that, and I am glad no one behind that Nek says that either, but this I will say, that every man of mine when he looks at Majuba, when he looks at the top of that mountain there, thinks of nothing but the wondrous work of the Almighty.’ Wood seemed touched. ‘I am not an unbeliever; I also say my prayers,’ he ejaculated. ‘I am glad,’ I said, ‘to hear you say that, but do you know what we pray for? We don’t pray to conquer nations and annex countries; what we pray for is that Almighty God may so open the eyes of the gracious Queen of England that she and her counsellors may see what is justice and what is right, then we shall feel sure of our case and know that freedom to our country must come.’
“We then talked a little about Bronker’s Spruit and other incidents of the war, when, the document being finished, we went into the tent to sign it.”
Shortly after General Joubert concluded the above somewhat melo-dramatic description of his meeting with Sir Evelyn Wood, I took my leave, having spent a most interesting hour in the society of the generals.
Returning, however, to the description of my trip of 1881; when I got to the hotel I found all prepared for leaving, and after breakfast we started for Newcastle, intending to rest at Ingogo, as we had not time to visit Laing’s Nek (and moreover we could see the position from the road), where Colley’s first defeat took place on Jan. 28th, with a loss of 260 killed and wounded, and where Colonel Deane and Major Poole (Cetywayo’s old friend) were shot down. After a pleasant drive we crossed the Ingogo drift, the road gradually ascending until the plateau of Schuin’s Hooghte was reached, where Colley suffered his second defeat on Feb. 7th. Making a reconnaissance that morning with 273 of the 60th Rifles and 38 men of the mounted squadron from Mount Prospect, Colley was virtually lured to his destruction. The Boers retired before his advance, until having decoyed our troops to Schuin’s Hooghte, a high and perfectly unsheltered plateau, they opened a galling fire from the other side of the valley which intervened, a perfectly safe position for them. This was at 10:15 A. M., and until sundown our soldiers were nothing more or less than English targets for Dutch bullets. The field guns which Colley brought with him were useless; he had nothing to fire at but rocks, the Boers finding most excellent cover. The horses were shot down at the guns, the mules at the ambulance wagons, nothing living was safe for a moment from the Boers’ unerring aim. Maclean pointed out to me the exact stone, near the centre of the plateau, where Colley, Essex and Wilkinson took cover most of the day, and gave me a most vivid description of the field when, on a second visit next day, he found the place literally stormed by armies of cowardly vultures, attracted by the putrid effluvium from the rotting carcasses of the dead horses and mules. With my penknife I picked out splashes of lead from the crevices of the stones, as relics of the Boers’ accurate sighting. Wilkinson, brave young fellow, was drowned the same night in the Ingogo, when pluckily returning with comforts for the wounded, that river having become a sweeping torrent owing to the storm of rain which had been raging for some hours previous.
These poor fellows, left on the plateau in the rain, were totally deserted except by one or two, Parson Ritchie, Maclean and Dr. McGan, Colley having made good his retreat in the night with his troops and guns to Mount Prospect. There these men lay in a heap, the dying and the dead together, the pitchy darkness of that long, cold, wet, dreary night now and again relieved by vivid flashes of lurid lightning. Only 142[[74]] of our soldiers were sacrificed on this occasion. I went to look at one of the two inclosed grave-yards of these ill-fated men. In the corner of a little inclosure by the roadside I found tokens of the conflict and relics of our loss. The helmets of the dead soldiers, riddled with bullets, were promiscuously piled together, while all around could be seen traces of the desolation war had produced.
Turning to the Boer losses and casualties. The news of the Boers having taken the Amajuba mountain reached the Red Cross Association on March 6th, at Bethlehem, O. F. S., when its members at once left for Laing’s Nek, arriving there on March 16th. Dr. A. C. Daumas, in a report which he wrote to the secretary of the association, dated Aliwal North, July 29th, 1881, said:
“You may easily fancy what our astonishment was on being informed that although accepted with thanks, our services were by no means so urgent and necessary as we had at first supposed.
“In fact, the hospital established by Dr. Merinski, close to the camp, only contained in all one man sick and three wounded.”