CHAPTER XXVIII.
A SERIOUS ACCIDENT.—FELSTEAD’S.—DR. L. S. JAMESON.—TRIP TO THE TRANSVAAL.—MONS. GRANDIER.—UMBELINI AND CETYWAYO.—CHRISTIANA.—POTCHEFSTROOM.—PRETORIA.—THE ERSTE FABRIEKEN.—BATTLE-FIELD OF BRONKHORST SPRUIT.—BURGERS, SHEPSTONE AND LANYON.—MAPOCH AND MAMPOER.—START FOR NATAL.
Having now dwelt at some length on the three professions, Divinity, Law and Physic, as represented on the Diamond Fields, I will resume my personal narrative.
I have good personal reason for recollecting the outbreak of so-called small-pox, which (as the reader will remember) I have described in a previous chapter. The medical practitioners of the Diamond Fields were at the time for months in a state of the utmost excitement over the quæstio vexata of small-pox or no small-pox, and although the weight of evidence and the opinions of those whose qualifications and experience almost served to carry conviction was certainly in favor of the latter theory, yet on the opposite side were ranged, besides those to whom the public attributed (I trust and believe wrongly) interested motives, some men of undoubted ability in their profession and above the suspicion of maintaining the scare for the sake of their personal advantage. The authorities were naturally more or less in doubt also, for “who shall decide when doctors disagree?” and many were the commissions of doctors dispatched by Government to visit “Felstead’s,” a farm some eight miles from Kimberley, where a temporary hospital was erected, all natives coming from the Transvaal examined, and those found suffering from the disease isolated. On the morning of December 1, 1883, Dr. L. S. Jameson, one of the most able physicians in the Diamond Fields, in accordance with the request of government, drove out to the place in order to make an official report.
Our inspection over, we re-entered the vehicle and set out on our way home to breakfast, when my horses became unmanageable and dashed amidst a herd of cattle, with the result that the cart was overturned and Dr. L. S. Jameson thrown out with immense force some fifteen yards, happily without sustaining any hurt, while I was less fortunate, for though I fell out close beside the vehicle, I received such serious injuries (involving extravasation of blood upon the brain) that I remained for four or five days perfectly unconscious, and on coming to my senses found myself in the Carnavon Hospital, suffering from paralysis of the right side. Here let me briefly thank Mr. Denis Doyle, the able and energetic Sanitary Inspector of the Kimberley municipality, for the great and invaluable services which he rendered to me, so I am told, on the morning of my accident, by providing relays of natives to carry me to the hospital. I would also warmly thank those members of my own profession, especially Dr. L. S. Jameson, who took on himself the sole responsibility of my case, for their unremitting attention: the good sister Henrietta and kind sisters and nurses of the hospital, and the public of the Four Camps, who exhibited an earnest solicitude as to my condition, that deeply touched me and that I shall never forget. Immediately on my recovering sufficient strength to move about, I determined to take a tour through the Transvaal, a country that I had long been desirous of visiting, and I booked a seat for Pretoria in the coach leaving Kimberley on December 31, 1883. My friends, however, not thinking me strong enough to travel, caused me much vexation, by ingeniously contriving that I should miss the coach, and in consequence my journey was postponed for another week. However, I took good care that their over-solicitude, as I thought it, should not make me miss the coach a second time, and I left on January 7th.
Just as I was sitting in the coach, preparing to start, a bundle of letters was placed in my hand, including one from my wife, who was then visiting our children in Germany. Curiously enough this letter was written on the very day after my accident, and contained the following request, “Let me know if anything, however trivial, has happened to you to-day. I have a strange feeling that something, I know not what, has occurred, which makes me intensely anxious.” I do not intend to draw any deduction from what, after all. may have been a mere coincidence, but the facts, nevertheless, are as I have stated.
How many times before T returned to Kimberley, if my pride would have allowed me, should I not have freely admitted the folly of my journey! To a man who had sustained a shock to his nervous system such as I had, the bumping for nearly a fortnight in a four-horse coach along primitive South African roads, was naturally not the best course of curative treatment.
Leaving Kimberley early in the morning a long stage brought us to a roadside inn, which was, and is, I believe, kept by M. Grandier, formerly a trooper in Weatherly’s Horse during the Zulu war.
Taking out the horses we rested here some time, and I persuaded Mr. Grandier, whom I had met in Kimberley, to tell me the story of his narrow escape at Zlobani Mountain during the war with Cetywayo. The facts of his escape, as he related them to me, are indeed stranger than fiction. “I was a trooper,” said Mr. Grandier, “in Weatherly’s Horse, and I shall never forget the morning of the 28th of March, 1879, and the attack of the Zulus at Zlobani. Ah! Mon Dieu, Colonel Weatherly was a fine man; we worshipped him, and would have followed him to the jaws of death. It took us most difficult work to get to the top of the mountain; we were at it all night, but we accomplished it. We stopped at the top an hour or two, when Colonel Buller perceived the black hordes in thousands just like monkeys, climbing up on all sides to hem us in. The Colonel told us to get down as quickly as we could, and did not we ride! I shall never forget the last sight of my beloved old Colonel; the picture is still in my mind. It seems but yesterday I saw him in the distance surrounded by howling Kafirs, all hope lost, covering his son, a bright, fair-haired lad of fifteen, from the cruel assegais of his brutal foes. I jumped down the sides of rocks as big as this house, my little horse always landing on its legs, and at last, after many escapes from the Zulus, got safely to the bottom. Five or six of our fellows at once got hold of my stirrups, seized my horse’s tail, nearly dragging him to the ground, and so weighted the poor brute that he was done up in a mile or two, and I had to leave him. What did I do? I ran like the devil and managed to hide myself in some tall grass, when, as night was coming on, I thought I was safe. Four Zulus, however, spied me out; it was no use my resisting, so they seized and stripped me of everything. I never could tell why they did not kill me; the only thing they did was to drive me on in front of them, telling me to ‘hambake.’ Every moment I thought my last. After walking some miles, we stopped at the kraal of Umbelini, an ex-Swazi chief, half-way up the valley, who was one of Cetywayo’s adherents. How I wondered what would happen next! Naked as I was, they tied me to a post, when the women tore round me as if mad, spat in my face, and pulled out my beard, while the men formed a circle, and yelled and danced about me like very fiends! This lasted far into the morning, when, half dead from fatigue and terror though I was, a Zulu, who could speak a little Dutch, raised my hopes of life by telling me that I was meant as a present to Cetywayo. Resting a little they started me off with an escort, to a place which I afterwards found to be Ulundi, Cetywayo’s head kraal. I can assure you I was as naked as when I was born, and the broiling sun in the day and the cold at night almost drove me mad. At Cetywayo’s I was treated just as badly as at Umbelini’s. The women again acted as perfect devils from the pit below. Cetywayo was disappointed with me, did not believe I was unable from weakness to handle the two guns that he showed me and which had been taken at Isandhlwana. He told me to get back to Umbelini’s kraal (for the worst I presumed) as he found me of no use. Starting back with two Kafirs as a guard, at the close of the day I felt completely exhausted, when they allowed me to rest close by a mealie field on the banks of a stream. Fortunately for me my guards were nearly as much wearied as myself, and only too glad to take a rest. One sat down to snuff, while the other went to fetch water. A sudden idea struck me, and, making a regular leap for life, I jumped and seized an assegai lying on the ground, and in less than no time stabbed the Zulu who was engaged in snuffing, right through the heart. Then snatching one of the rifles that they had with them, I waited for the Zulu returning with the water, who, as soon as he caught sight of me, bolted into the long grass, leaving me free once more. The excitement gave me fresh strength to begin another fight for life, and, to make a long story short, in two or three days, after a desperate struggle, I got back to the camp at Kambula, much to the surprise of my comrades, who for eighteen days had given me up as lost. For weeks I suffered much from the exposure, but recovered sufficiently to get to Ulundi in time for the finish. I shall never, however, forget or get over my introduction to Cetywayo.”
The story and our lunch being finished, on we went to Christiana, my only companion in the coach being a Mr. Fowler, who was engaged by some English capitalists to report on certain properties in the Transvaal said to be auriferous. Obviously plain and straightforward, his manner commanded confidence, and his report of the places which he was specially engaged to examine, as I afterwards heard, was not of the glowing color that distinguished others which were made to home capitalists, by perhaps personally interested experts, as I then believed.