“Your brother
“Harry.
“P.S.—I have been urged by many friends to send home some one to support the cause of my government. I won’t. It is a weak line of conduct to appeal to friendship when conduct is in intention free from imputation of evil. Let Miss Coutts peruse this if she can. You had better copy it in your legible hand, for the enormous quantity I write has as much impaired my autograph as hard roads the fore-legs of a trotting horse, if England still produces one. That she does asses, I know.”
One of Sir Harry’s nephews, writing home on the 21st, says—
“My uncle’s health, thank God, considering all things, is far from bad, but he is obliged to be very careful, and cannot stand exposure to damp or cold. The Hottentots are mostly in the colony in small bands, plundering the poor defenceless farmers; constant outrages are committed by these rascals.... Sir Harry confidently expects that two or three regiments will be speedily sent out, and sincerely do I hope they may, for to end the war with his present force is impossible.”
On the last four days of June a combined movement to clear the Amatolas which had long been preparing was at last accomplished, the 1st Division under the command of Somerset co-operating with the 2nd under Michel (Colonel Mackinnon being ill), assisted by Tylden with 300 men from Whittlesea. The operations were conducted by four columns converging to a centre. They were completely successful, but Sir Harry saw no signs that they had hastened the end of the war, and warned the inhabitants of the colony that the beaten Kafirs were likely to go about in small marauding parties as “wolves”—an anticipation too sadly realized by the rush which was now made into the Colony, and the terrible depredations which accompanied it.
The trial of the Kat River rebels resulted in 47 of them being sentenced to death—a sentence which Sir Harry commuted to penal servitude for life; so bringing on himself in some quarters the charge of excessive leniency. Chase, who considers the commutation a “grave mistake,” excuses it on the ground that Sir Harry “pitied the poor creatures, knowing that they had been deluded into the belief that they are taught by the precept of the Bible to fight for independence with the sword of Gideon.”[210] It is better to accept the explanation given by Sir Harry himself in his dispatch of the 7th April, 1852.
“Surrounded as I and Major-General Somerset were by these people drawn from the eastern and western districts, one false step or untimely exercise of power and martial law would have plunged the whole into the chaos of revolution. Her Majesty’s troops must have abandoned their advanced positions and fallen back on Grahamstown, and the T’Slambie tribes would have risen as well as every curly-headed black from Cape Town to Natal.”[211]
During July and August bands of the enemy filled the country between Fort Beaufort and the Fish River, penetrating later into Lower Albany itself, and burning and marauding wherever they appeared. It was natural that the colonists should appeal to the Commander-in-Chief to assist them. Feeling, however, that if he fell back from King William’s Town, his retreat would be the signal for tribes on the east, hitherto passive, to join the Gaikas, he expressed his wish to continue operations in the Amatolas, and ordered Somerset to establish posts of burghers, if they would turn out, at every eligible point. Somerset replied that the burghers could not now withstand the attacks, and he had established a camp at Haddon on the Koonap; and a month later Sir Harry sent Colonel Eyre with the 73rd Regiment from King William’s Town to Bathurst to protect Grahamstown and Lower Albany.
And so the war went on, the Commander ever sending out fresh patrols to harass the foe in his fastnesses,—on the 8th August he says that the 73rd regiment has now marched 2838 miles since the outbreak of hostilities,—maintaining every single post, yet still, for want of an adequate force, unable to effect any decisive action. Meanwhile there were fresh defections among the Hottentots in the Cape Corps, and news came from Warden in the Orange River Sovereignty that many of the Boers there would not assist him against Moshesh, and their fellow-countrymen over the Vaal were disposed to back them in their hostility to the British Government. He was bidden to act only on the defensive till troops could be sent to him.