Having landed at the Buffalo mouth on 9th December, he reached King William’s Town the same night, and next day by proclamation called on all loyal citizens to enrol themselves as volunteers. The Kafirs were arming, and the farmers with their flocks and herds had fled in panic from the frontier. After a meeting with the chiefs (14th), which was again considered satisfactory, Sir Harry moved his troops to positions round the Amatola Mountains to prevent any combined movement between Kreili and the Gaikas. He proceeded himself to Fort Cox. Here on the 19th he held another meeting, at which, except Anta and Sandilli (who had now been outlawed), all the chiefs were present with their councillors and 3000 of their people. When Sir Harry vigorously denounced Sandilli’s conduct they apparently acquiesced, but asked the Governor why he had brought the troops?
From Fort Cox Sir Harry sent Colonel Mackinnon on 24th December with a patrol up the gorge of the Keiskamma in the direction in which Sandilli was supposed to be hiding, it being thought that when the troops approached he would either surrender or flee the country. Mackinnon was, however, attacked in a defile, and twelve of his men were killed. And so broke out a new Kafir War, a “fitting legacy,” says Chase, “of the retrocessive policy of 1836,” and, we may add, unfortunately not the last disastrous war to which those words could be applied.
Next day (Christmas Day) three of the four military villages which had been established in British Kaffraria not quite three years before, Woburn, Auckland, and Juanasburg, were treacherously attacked by Kafirs, many of whom had just shared the Christmas dinner of their victims, and the settlers murdered. The Gaikas sprang to arms; every chief but Pato joined in the rising; and of a body of 400 Kafir police 365 rushed to their tribes with their arms and ammunition.
Meanwhile the Commander-in-Chief was shut up in Fort Cox in the Amatola basin, with hordes of wild Kafirs filling the bush and heights on every side, and the prospect before him of speedy starvation if he remained, or death from a bullet or an assagai if he issued forth. Colonel Somerset from Fort Hare made two unsuccessful attempts at relief. In the second, on 29th December, after fighting for four hours, he was forced to retire. After this he wrote to Sir Harry, begging him not to move with infantry, or they would be cut to pieces, but to sally out with 250 men of the Cape Mounted Rifles.
“This Sir Harry, in the daring, dashing way so characteristic of him, gallantly did, wearing the forage cap and uniform of one of the Cape Rifles, and by this timely incognito he rode twelve hazardous miles through the desultory fire of the Kafirs on the way to King William’s Town. At the Debe Nek, about halfway, a strong attempt was made to intercept the Corps, but Sir Harry Smith and his escort vigorously spurred through their opponents, and after a smart ride reached the town, having eluded six bodies of Kafirs, who little suspected how great a prize was then in their power.”[203]
EASTERN FRONTIER
of the COLONY of the
CAPE of GOOD HOPE