Part 2, Chapter XIV.
Opening of the Second Campaign.
The opening of the mouth of the Buffalo river, for the transmission of stores seaward to Kaffirland, will, I trust, prove the usefulness of this key to the seat of war and turmoil. With what breathless eagerness will the first boat be watched careering through the foam, which at times separates, as a veil, the stream from the ocean! Intent as we, poor exiles, are upon every movement that affects the progress of operations, languishing for home, as well as interested in the welfare of the colony, we gaze earnestly on each convoy of waggons wending its slow, uncertain way up the hill “hard by,” on its way to the front. On the 22nd of March, we paused in our evening walk to observe the train of twenty-six waggons, en route for the Buffalo mouth. What an example of African locomotion it presented! Some of these contained ammunition, and it struck me that the nature of their contents might have been concealed rather than manifested by their funereal coverings of black canvas. The foremost in the train suddenly stopped. Had a steam-engine led the van, it would have panted, and puffed, and tugged in vain, along such a pathway. The transport for soldiers’ necessaries in this country is so small, that this waggon had been loaded beyond the capabilities of so cumbrous a machine, and it stuck fast; none of the others, therefore, could move along the narrow road. In vain, the driver slashed his long whip,—the echoes only mocked it. In vain, he shouted “Bosjeman!” “Abeveldt!” “England!” to his oxen; in vain, the Hottentot forelouper screamed, and leaped, and scolded “Ireland” and “Scotland.” He might as well have attempted to move those two ancient kingdoms from their foundations, as the oxen named after them: they only tossed their heads at him and their tails at the driver as if in pure scorn. They were weary, and chose to rest! The despairing escort, foreseeing delay, used frantic exertions to push the huge vehicle from behind, and the drivers in the rear took advantage of the blockade to light their pipes and smoke them with their usual imperturbability. The shrill voices of the vrouws, who accompany their husbands on all occasions, to make their coffee, light their fires, and broil their carbonatje, formed a chorus, in very high treble and very low Dutch, to the unmusical medley.
At length, there was at attempt at an advance; but, as the leaders would only move up the face of the hill on one side, or down the slope on the other, very little ground was got over; and, soon after sunset, the opening between the hills was illuminated by the fires of the encampment formed there.
In March the second campaign fairly commenced; Páto was yet unconquered. Three companies of the 73rd marched from King William’s Town for the Buffalo Mouth, and were relieved by the same number of the 45th, from Fort Hare. Colonel Buller, Rifle Brigade, commanded the field-force at King William’s Town; Colonel Van der Meulen, the 73rd, at the mouth of the Buffalo, where Lieutenant Jervois, R.E., selected the site, and made preparations for building a military post for 300 men. Colonel Johnstone, 27th Regiment, was appointed Commandant at Fort Hare. The great Chief, Macomo, went wandering about the town at Fort Beaufort in a state of frenzy, from intoxication, having made the canteen his head-quarters. The only wife, out of ten, who clung to him in his fallen fortunes, complained, at last, of the injuries he had inflicted upon her, by blows, as well as with a sharp instrument; and his child, whom he had in some whim named “Magistrate,” narrowly escaped the fate of the poor little creature at Fort Hare, which, if not murdered at once by him, died from the effects of his savage treatment.
The intelligence received from the Buffalo Mouth on the 4th of April, was, that Major Smith, 73rd, had been wounded by the enemy in ambush near the camp, when visiting the sentries; and two Burghers and a Fingo shot. There was the usual detail of cattle stolen and recaptured, with casualties on both sides pretty equal, waggons fired at, and a successful chase by Captain Armstrong, Cape Mounted Rifles, after a Kaffir lad, whom he rode down, but who would give no satisfactory information, although he was endeavouring to communicate with some mounted Kaffirs, swimming their horses across the Keiskama. Colonel Somerset, in his dispatch, suggested “the expediency of establishing a cavalry post on the cast bank of the Keiskama, to intercept marauding parties, who are constantly passing out of the Colony with cattle.” Sir Henry Pottinger decided on shooting all such captured cattle as could not be removed without encumbering the troops, or delaying them in their operations.
Colonel Somerset’s plan, of dotting the Colony with troops, was the means of protecting it materially from Kaffir thieves. An old Dutch settler’s cattle were once driven, by a band of these robbers, right into Commatje’s post, on the Fish river; proving that they were hurried or intercepted in their march, or, what is equally probable, that they had come from a distance. One lot of cattle was recaptured in the neighbourhood of Double Drift, another post of the Fish River; the Kaffir thief was first observed reclining under a bush, calmly contemplating his precious booty. Occasionally, we were without milk, in consequence of the milkman’s cows having vanished in the night, within three miles of Graham’s Town. Such losses, however, not unfrequently occurred from carelessness on the part of the owners, or herds; the cattle straying to the edge of the bush, where there were always Kaffirs lying in wait to “lift” them.
Bathurst, in Lower Albany, may be said to defend itself to its best ability. This pretty settlement has risen and flourished under the patient labour of emigrants, sent thither in 1820, chiefly through the instrumentality of the Duke of Newcastle. The labourer, the mechanic, the unthriving tradesman, the servant without work, may not only find employment, but are absolutely wanted here. The former may plant his three, and sometimes four, crops of potatoes in the year, to say nothing of other produce, and manifold resources of gain and comfort. It is singular that Great Britain, in 1847, suffered from the failure of the crops; the gardens of corn, pumpkin, etc, in Kaffirland, were more than usually productive.
One of the most thriving establishments I have seen is a location called Clumber, five miles from Bathurst, originally established by an emigrant sent hither by the Duke of Newcastle. Here, as in other places, the chapel is built as a place of refuge in case of war; it stands on a green mound, commanding an extensive view, and its position is admirably adapted for the purposes of defence and observation. I am struck with the church, which would be an ornament to any large, well-built English town.