We asked them if they, too, had lost their cattle? The man smiled, as he said, “Yes;” he seemed amused at our supposing it could have escaped the hands of the robber. The woman sighed, and answered that two of her herds had been killed, and her son had had a narrow escape of being shot. “We did not like to stay after that, Ma’am,” said she, “and we have been many months in Graham’s Town. I’m sure I don’t think we are safe now, in spite of all the fresh soldiers we’ve got in the country,” she continued, casting a frightened glance towards the gloomy mountains behind the homestead, “but we are all ruined, and things can’t be much worse, so we may as well take our chance.”
The colonists, who are the best judges of the benefits conferred on them by Colonel Somerset’s exertions in their behalf, have come forward to bestow a solid testimony of their gratitude towards him, by setting on foot a subscription for the purchase of a piece of plate, setting forth that “The inhabitants of Albany, impressed with the great service rendered them by Colonel Somerset during the Kaffir war, by his rapid march from Block Drift into Lower Albany and other parts of the district, thereby relieving the inhabitants from imminent danger, and in some cases from almost certain destruction, from the wrathful hands of an invading enemy, and further for his services rendered to the Colony in general by his great exertions in the field, it is proposed to present him with a piece of plate, as a mark of their esteem and gratitude.”
The march alluded to, of such importance to the safety and he lives of the unfortunate settlers, was “made on his own responsibility.” By this “forced march,” says the Graham’s Town Journal, February 13th, 1847, “Colonel Somerset saved Theopolis, Farmerfield, Salem, Bathurst, and other places in Lower Albany, from probable destruction.”
On the departure of his Excellency Sir Peregrine Maitland from the frontier, the troops fell back from the Kei to the Buffalo, where Colonel Van der Meulen assumed the command of a division, consisting of four companies of the Rifle Brigade, beside his own regiment, the 73rd, two guns, seventy Cape Corps, a squadron of the 7th Dragoon Guards, and a chequered group of Provisionals. This division encamped amid the ruins of what once promised to be a flourishing town, named by Sir Harry Smith, King William’s Town; the site having been taken possession of by him in the name of William the Fourth, in 1835; but it was subsequently abandoned.
Here, then, among these memorials of the last war, the troops are building huts and bowers for themselves. The heat is intolerable. The walls of Sir Harry Smith’s abode are still standing, and the old garden contains some excellent fruit trees, planted probably under the direction of Lady Smith, the interesting Spanish heroine of some charming sketches of the Peninsula, and the favourite of the African frontier. Lady Smith, of kindly memory, would live in the hearts of those who knew her, even were she not connected with one of the heroes of the late conquests in India.
Fort Peddie has been strengthened, and is now the head-quarters of the 6th Regiment, under Lieutenant-Colonel Michel. Besides the 6th, Colonel Michel has at his disposal a troop of Dragoons, a party of the Cape Corps, and some companies of the Rifle Brigade.
The 91st are scattered far and wide at outposts and bivouacs. The light company, under Captain Savage, are in Colonel Michel’s district, patrolling between Post Victoria (abandoned and resumed within eight months) and Fort Peddie. The Grenadiers, under Captain Ward, are on their march to the neighbourhood of Hell’s Poort, to intercept cattle-lifters. The levies have been dismissed, or dispersed of their own accord; the flank companies of Her Majesty’s 91st are employed in their stead!
The Beaufort Division is under the command of Lieutenant-Colonel Johnstone, 27th Regiment, and consists of the 45th Regiment, under Lieutenant-Colonel Erskine; the reserve battalion 91st, under Lieutenant-Colonel Campbell; 7th Dragoon Guards, under Lieutenant-Colonel Richardson, and a Burgher Force, under Major Sutton, Cape Mounted Rifles.