He and I had a long walk in the garden, when he said, “I shall appoint you Commandant of the Garrison. You are ex officio, as second in command to me, the senior Member of Council, and, if any accident happened to me, the administration of the government would devolve on you—John Bell, your senior officer, being Colonial Secretary and holding no military position.”
No man was ever more happily placed than I was. The quarter in Cape Castle forming the residence of the Governor was excellent, with a little square in the rear with capital stables and out-offices. The garrison consisted of one company of Artillery, the 72nd Highlanders, a magnificent corps, and the 98th, very highly organized, considering the short period they had been raised.
My first object was to visit and reduce the guards, which I soon did very considerably on a representation to the Governor. The next was to do away with guards over convicts working on the road. This could not be effected at once, but such a friend to the soldier as Sir Lowry was, readily received my various representations of the ill effects on discipline of these guards, and, so soon as arrangements could be made, these were also abolished. The next guard to dispose of was one of one sergeant, one corporal, and six privates at the Observatory, four miles from Cape Town, and it was not long before the building, or the star-gazers, discovered that their celestial pursuits could be carried on without the aid terrestrial of soldiers.
Some months after my arrival, the Kafirs being on the eve of an outbreak, the Governor, Sir Lowry Cole, went to the frontier. He requested me to remain at Cape Town unless a war began, when I was immediately to join. I frequently had the troops bivouacked, and taught them to cook in camp, piquets, etc., and every other camp duty. On one occasion I had ball cartridges, every company at its target, and I had out two six-pounders with their target. I manœuvred the troops, so moving the targets as to be in their front, and I never saw half so good target practice with muskets before. The men were delighted and emulous beyond measure. The six-pounders, too, made excellent shots, and I had not a single casualty.
About this time that noble fellow, General Lord Dalhousie, arrived on his way out to India as Commander-in-Chief. I gave him a capital sham fight, concluding by storming Fort Amsterdam, at which he was highly amused. I knew his Lordship in America,[93] and we then and now had many a laugh at our performances at Vittoria, previously related.
The Kafir war ended in patching up old treaties, and the Governor returned. About this time I acted as Military Secretary and Deputy Adjutant-General, holding the appointments of Deputy Quartermaster-General and Commandant; and ultimately the appointments of Deputy Adjutant-General and Deputy Quartermaster General were blended, and I held both, being called Deputy Quartermaster-General.
Horses at the Cape are excellent. The breed had been much improved by Lord Charles Somerset, the former Governor, by the importation of some mares and several of the highest-bred English thoroughbred sires. I soon had a most beautiful stud. The sporting butcher Van Reenen had an excellent pack of fox-hounds, which he virtually allowed me to hunt, and many is the capital run we had, but over the most breakneck country that hounds ever crossed—sands covered with the most beautiful variety of the erica, or heath, and barren hills of driftsands. These are dug up by moles literally as big as rabbits. Their ordinary holes on hills and under-excavations no good hunter will fall in, but in their breeding-holes I defy any horse to avoid going heels over head, if his fore-legs come on them, although many old experienced hunters know them and jump over. I had one little horse not fourteen hands, descended from Arabs; he never gave me a fall, and I never failed to bring the brush to his stable when I rode him; but with all other horses I have had some awful falls, particularly after rain, when the sand is saturated with water and very heavy. Falls of this description are far more serious than rolling over our fences at home, where activity enables you to get away from your horse, as he is some seconds or so coming down, but in a mole-hole you fall like a shot, the horse’s head first coming to the ground, next yours, and he rolls right over you. When a horse’s hind legs go into a breeding-earth the sensation is awful, and how the noble animals escape without breaking their backs remains one of the wonders.
Every shooting-season I made a capital excursion, first to my sporting friend’s, Proctor’s. He was a retired officer of the 21st Dragoons, a capital sportsman, an excellent farmer, a good judge of a horse, and a better one of how to sell him to those whom he saw he could make money of. He had a family of thirteen children; his wife was a Dutch lady, still good-looking. My wife always accompanied me, as well as my friend Bob Baillie, of the 72nd Regiment, who was subsequently celebrated in the sporting magazines as a rider. We started with an immense waggon, eight horses, every description of commissariat stores, greyhounds, pointers, setters, retrievers, terriers, spaniels, and, under Proctor’s guidance, we had capital sport.
The partridge-shooting was nearly as good as grouse-shooting; the bird, called the grey partridge, very much resembled the grouse, and was a noble sporting bird. There is also the red partridge, large, but stupid to shoot. The best sport with them is to ride them down with spaniels. There are several sorts of antelopes, which lie in the bushes and jump up under your feet as hares do. These you shoot with buck-shot. Near Cape Town there is only one sort of antelope “on the look-out” like our fallow deer, grey, very handsome, and fleet, called by the Dutch the rhee-bok. On the frontier and in the interior there are a great variety of this gazing-deer, the most remarkable being the springbok, which is exceedingly swift, parti-coloured or pied, and they almost fly from you. They have the power of expanding their long hair on the top of the back, like opening and shutting a fan. The bonte-bok is in very large herds. These you are prohibited to shoot without a special authority from Government, and the number even which you may shoot is limited.
The variety of modes of shooting these antelopes is highly amusing. To shoot the eland, the largest species, as big as a two-year-old heifer, you go full speed in a waggon over ground so rough that, what with the speed, you can hardly hold on and preserve your guns. The animals, hearing all the noise, stop to gaze. The waggon is instantly pulled up, and you fire balls. After such a jolting, he is a steady fellow who fires with any precision.