I have some excellent guides to all the passes in the ridge of hills which we are going to stir up to look for cattle. This Kafir war is nothing else than that. Read of Walter Scott’s Borderers, and you will learn what Kafir warfare is:
“He would ride
A foray on the Scottish side.”
It is just that. You gallop in, and half by force, half by stratagem, pounce upon them wherever you can find them; frighten their wives, burn their homes, lift their cattle, and return home quite triumphant.
4th April.
Last night at eight o’clock, on our return from a march of twenty-two hours, I received your dear letter. Yesterday I roared myself into one of my Vittoria lost voices,[260] and to-day I am whispering and swearing exclusively for my own amusement, for no one hears me. Old Doyle says I am still in advance in the talking way, and could afford a year’s silence at least. Murray is sitting with me; he is my great friend. Your description of your robbery and the “cuchillo”[261] is highly amusing. I ought to publish it in this army, and show what a Spanish woman dare, for, by heavens! here I have some arrant cowards. The Boers of the old Commandos talk of the glories of former times, when the Kafirs had only assagais. But now that they have a few guns, which they use very badly, Mynheer funks. There are, however, some very fine fellows amongst them.
Quite delighted to hear of the “Green Jacket” getting on the windows. We want very much some “Green Jackets”[262] here, for this warfare has all—nay! more than all—the fatigue of any other without the real excitement of war. Oh! the noise of the devils of captured cattle. Above a thousand head of cows and calves are now roaring in our ears.
Headquarters, Camp on the Debe, 5th April, 1835.
Our Hottentots are the most willing fellows possible. I call them my children, and all their little complaints, wants, and grievances they lay before me, which I listen to most patiently, for I exact a deal of work from them.... I will send off a warning order to the troops to march to-morrow at daylight. I always like to give the fellows all the warning I can. Arrangements, as His old Excellency calls them, are leather and prunella; for though he writes them beautifully, and in the most military and technical terms, there is not a soul in this camp who understands what he means; so that the pith of the matter is contained in the words, “March at daylight to-morrow, Monday, the 6th instant, commissariat and other waggons following column.” There it is, and all hands understand that it takes just two hours for our commissariat train to arrive, from the moving off of the first waggon to the arrival of the last, when the road is good. You may, therefore, General Juana, conceive what it must be when there is any serious obstacle to pass. It is really quite ridiculous to see the proportion of soldiers to the waggons; for when stretched out on the road, each with eight bullocks, it looks as if each soldier had one waggon at least. You, General Juana, accustomed only to regular armies (except a few guerrillas or so), would laugh to see our motley group, with every costume of a mean kind which can be imagined,—the Boer with his old white slouch hat, his long gun, his miserable saddle and bridle; the Hottentots with a little low-crowned hat, black jacket and trousers; the 72nd’s men with crackers,[263] their pipe-clayed belts left behind, and a little ordinary pouch substituted for the large one, wearing a forage cap with a large red leather peak, which makes every man look exactly as if he had sore eyes; old Dutton strutting about the camp in the paraphernalia of a Kafir chieftain’s wife.