[314]. Ibid., i. p. 136-138.
[315]. ‘Grey’s Travels,’ i. p. 144.
[316]. ‘Grey’s Travels,’ i. p. 154.
[317]. Ibid., i. p. 153.
[318]. Ibid., i. p. 158.
[319]. ‘Grey’s Travels,’ i. p. 209.
[320]. Auger accompanied Captain Grey on one occasion to examine a sandstone ridge in the hope of finding egress from it. After proceeding some distance the corporal discovered a cave, in which was an intaglio face and head cut in the rock, of rather superior workmanship for an untutored savage; and Captain Grey has distinguished the work by giving a drawing of it in his Travels. Vol. i. p. 206.
Private Mustard, who had been at the Cape of Good Hope, brought his experience to bear upon the present service. He discovered the spoor of a large quadruped with a divided hoof. He had seen like impressions at the Cape. Captain Grey conceiving that Mustard had made some mistake, paid no attention to his report, until he afterwards saw traces of the animal himself. On one occasion the Captain followed its track for a mile and a half, when it was lost in rocky ground. The footmarks were larger than those of a buffalo, and it was apparently more bulky, for where it had passed through the brushwood, shrubs in its way of considerable size, had been crushed aside or broken down. The animal has not yet been seen. Its existence is, however, asserted, from the peculiarity of the spoor. Vol. i. p. 242, ‘Grey’s Travels.’
[321]. The senior of whom was second-corporal John Down, afterwards sergeant. In September, 1835, while pontooning in the Medway at Halling, he plunged into the river and saved from drowning, by means of an oar, private F. Adams of the corps. He also relieved from a very precarious situation lance-corporal Woodhead, of the Honourable East India Company’s sappers, who had jumped in to assist private Adams. For his courage and humanity the Royal Humane Society granted Down a pecuniary reward, and his officers gave him a military hold-all, containing the usual articles, chiefly of silver, bearing on a silver plate this inscription—“Presented by his officers to private John Down for his gallant conduct in rescuing a comrade from drowning.” This non-commissioned officer served two stations at Gibraltar and Bermuda, and being pensioned at 1s. 9d. in October, 1849, retired to Chatham, where he is now filling the humble but sufficient situation of pump-master to the Barracks at Brompton.
[322]. ‘United Service Journal,’ iii. 1838, p. 45, 274.