CHAPTER IV.
TRIP TO THE TUGELA.—MARITZBURG.—BISHOP COLENSO.—UMGENI FALLS.—ESTCOURT LIDGETTON.—CURIOUS ABSENCE OF FISH IN MOOI RIVER.—CAPT. ALLISON’S BORDER RESIDENCY.—USIDINANE’S CANNIBAL CAVES.— MONT AUX SOURCES.—UMBUNDI’S PASS.—RETURN JOURNEY.
After five years’ work without any intermission, I made arrangements early in 1870 to take a trip up country as far as the Drakensberg, a range of mountains which divides Natal from the Free State and Basutoland. I proposed to visit Captain Allison “at home” in his border residency, to see the celebrated falls, where I had been told the Tugela, rushing over awe-inspiring and romantic precipices, leaps 1,500 feet at a bound, then to visit the Mont aux sources, where from one single spot the Tugela issues forth on its course to Natal, the Elands River to the Free State, the Caledon to Basutoland, and the Orange River through the Cape Colony to the Atlantic Ocean; and further to explore the cannibal caves of Usidinane, situated in the heart of Putini’s tribe and Langalibalela’s location.
My wife, myself, Captain Hill, of the Victoria mounted rifles, an amateur photographer and four natives formed our party. Getting the wagons, oxen and provisions all in readiness, we left Verulam on March 3d.
UMZABA’S KRAAL, 1867.
The country between D’Urban and Maritzburg, the capital of the Natal colony, ascends gradually from the sea level to an elevation of over 2,000 feet, sometimes in gentle slopes, sometimes in abrupt and rugged steps. Our road lay through the village of Pinetown, a noted health resort, round the cuttings of that precipitous height called Bothas Hill, which afforded glimpses in the far distance of the fantastic mountains, with their volcanic cones and extinct craters, of the Inanda location, and the gloomy defiles through which the Umgeni River could be seen twisting and winding. Then passing the Inchanga cutting, with huge blocks of granite hundreds of tons in weight studding the foreground, and Camperdown, a hamlet consisting of two or three homesteads and a third-rate roadside inn, we at last reached Maritzburg, some fifty miles from the coast. Here we remained over Sunday, and of course went to the cathedral and heard Bishop Colenso preach. The sacred edifice was crowded, as we were told it always was when this revered prelate occupied the pulpit; and I may here say that his noble and commanding presence, an attraction in itself, added greatly to the fascination of his eloquence. The sermon that the bishop gave us on the morning on which I heard him dealt with the trials and sufferings of Christ. In vain I looked out for heretical doctrines, but seldom has it been my privilege to listen to a sermon so devout in spirit and withal so orthodox.
It was difficult indeed, seeing and hearing him, to realize the opposition with which he was then meeting, or to comprehend the presumption, I might say the gnarling, that characterized the majority of his revilers.
While walking round the city I noticed that everything looked clean and cheerful. The streams of water running in open sluits along the side of the foot-paths, the clusters of weeping willows, the rows of stately syringas, and the pretty villas nestling in clumps of the densest foliage, conveyed the impression of ease and comfort. I also visited the various public buildings, including the banks, schools, library and hospital. On my last evening in Maritzburg, spending a few hours at the Victoria club, I met Judge Phillips (subsequently promoted to a similar judicial office in Cyprus), who, when talking over the route which I intended to take, told me that after reaching the summit of the Drakensberg and visiting the falls of the Tugela, I ought to come down again into Natal through a pass named after a certain chief Umbundi, “where,” he said, “you will have, if my information be correct, to pick your way through a forest of magnificent cypress trees such as you have never before seen.” I thanked him at the time for his information, and often since have I been glad that I took the judge’s suggested route, where, as he told me I should and as will be seen later, I found one of the grandest and most novel sights in South Africa. Next day, we left Maritzburg and ascended the Town Hill. Here we noticed the terraced character of the country, for this road rising step by step, at least 1,500 feet, landed us fairly on the plateau which forms the midland districts of Natal, where the long, rolling, grassy sweeps are the principal features of the landscape.
The cracks of the long whip, the shouts of the driver, the regular times to outspan and inspan, to eat and sleep, are the only events to break the monotony of a wagon journey. The power of the trusty wagon whip, with its crack so “loud and sharp,” has so bewitchingly been sung by Mr. Charles Barter, one of Natal’s oldest colonists, that I need not offer any excuse for reproducing it here. Many a time, to the tune of the “Fine old English Gentleman,” have I listened to the lay.
Britannia’s three great colonies, though children of one mother,