Camp on the Buffalo, daylight or nearly so,
Friday, 10th April, 1835.
The Third Division, under Jem Cox, and the Fourth Division are going to remain here to hunt the rebel chiefs, while the First and Second and Headquarters go on to Hintza to bring back the captured cattle. I hope twelve days may see us back here again.
Bivouac on the Gunga Rivulet, six miles from the
Gonoube River, 4 p.m., 11th April, 1835.
I am writing on my knees, the table not having arrived in the waggon just yet, in a most beautiful bivouac on the banks of a woody streamlet with beautiful water, and grass up to the knees. We have marched twenty miles from the Buffalo upon the main road into Kafirland over very open country without seeing anything but some Kafir cranes, two khorans, and three partridges. Lots of kraals, but all have been deserted for some time.
I am half afraid Master is only to go to the Gonoube to-morrow—six miles—and halt the next day. Such slow work is quite dreadful. Last night I had a regular fight with him. He funked dividing the army—nay, actually gave it up for all I could say or do. I was perfectly mortified. However, in the middle of the night he changed his mind, and I had it all my own way. He is far too scientific for this guerrilla warfare, always full of combinations and reserves, and rears, and fronts, and cautions and dangers, and false movements, and doubts and fears. The greatest fault one can be guilty of is dash. Yet it is the thing, and there is nothing to fear.
I wish you were with me just now. The tent is all pitched, my table up, the rushes laid down, all my clothes put inside (as it looks as if a heavy dew were going to fall), a large heap of beautiful dry wood laid ready to light at daylight. The soup has been on at least two hours. Our dinner, I hope, will be good, for me most certainly, for all I care about is soup with rice, and I eat such a lot, about five times as much as when with my dear old woman. We get also a lot of beautiful pumpkins from the Kafirs’ gardens, which help the soup, and we boil it with our rice. To-day, had there been time, we should have had a hare, which one of the men brought me yesterday; which I ordered to be stewed with rice and a piece of ham (Viva España!). But then we ought to have had un poco de aceyte y una cabeza de ajos.[264]... I wonder how I write Spanish. Do you understand it or not? I get on just as fast with it as English, anyhow; and if you do not understand, ’tis you who have forgot your own language, and not I how to write it.
6 o’clock, evening. 12th.
No ladies or any cattle brought in to-day, but I think we are running the whole population to earth on the Kei. There are great marks or spoors of innumerable cattle having been driven towards it. This should be our boundary. It is as bare of wood as the fens in my country, or even your country, scarcely covert for a hare, much less for the wily Kafir, whom I look upon just as a wild beast and try to hunt him as such. I little thought that the pains I took to make a huntsman of myself would hereafter befit me for a general of renown in Kafir warfare. But so it is. “Right ahead” and a “forward cast” will soon ensure you “Woo-hoop,” or as you call it “Oo-oop.” (Don’t “queeze” me, it is very “estraordinary,” you always do so.)
I hope that you may hear from me every week. I do my best to ensure it, and as yet I trust you have not been disappointed. If you are, be assured it cannot be helped. The distance is so enormous, and the odd devils we have to send as escorts with the mails do not, like regular soldiers, enable one to say that it will arrive on such an hour on such a day. The Hottentots are to be trusted, poor fellows; but the Boers are too fond of sleeping. Although I get on famously with them, I have no particular opinion of their pluck, and always have about me my twelve men with double-barrelled guns, my escort, with old Japps, whose very holloa! would frighten a Kafir if his shot did not. Twelve more plucky fellows I never saw, and they watch me like hawks. If I move, they are after me and all round me, and every night mount sentry over me. If I whisper, Japps hears me. My bugler is no great hand as a musician, but the gamest fellow I ever saw (I am my own trumpeter, n’est-ce pas, ma femme?); but all our fighting is now over. It is quite an affair of Smithfield Market now, or will be in a few days.