In the valley at the foot of the nearer range were some romantic kloofs in which were the ruins of several farm houses, which must have been fine situations in time of peace, warm and sheltered, luxuriant in vegetation, with orangeries, vineyards, and orchards of peaches, figs, and nectarines, shut in by green, sloping mountains, on which their cattle found excellent grazing, and well supplied with water from the rocky burns which bubbled down from the hills to the river in the lower valley. Now these lately prosperous and peaceful homes were burnt and blackened ruins, the four walls alone standing, the orchards overgrown, and rusted implements of husbandry strewed about, or left as they had been used on the day of flight or attack. One, in particular, at Hartebeest Fontein, deserves mention, belonging to a veteran tar, named Smith, who had served under Nelson, and been for many years a prisoner in France, where he had married a French girl, whose history was as eventful as his own, and who still lived with him at Post Retief, and shared his misfortunes at threescore and ten. The house bore ample marks of a desperate conflict and resistance, the walls being literally riddled with balls, some three or four hundred at the very least. The attack had lasted nearly thirty hours, the little band of fifteen or sixteen defenders, under the direction of the gallant old tar, then upwards of seventy, never leaving their posts at the loop-holes the whole time; only one of their number was killed, and so gallant and determined was their resistance, that the enemy at last abandoned the capture or destruction of the house as impracticable, and retired, carrying off, however, nearly 1000 sheep, and all the cattle, horses, and corn.
At the only other farm house near us, beside those mentioned in our night expedition, on a former page, the windows were bricked up, leaving only a few narrow loop-holes; we found the proprietor a perfect specimen of a Dutch Boer, with the universal round jacket and broad-brimmed hat, sitting on the stoep in front of his solitary house smoking the usual green-stone pipe in solemn silence. Saluting us with a "Goen dag, Baas," as we rode up, he requested us to walk in; so dismounting, we entered a large comfortless room, with a stone floor, dimly lighted by the narrow loop-holes, and half filled with sacks of meal, and heaps of Indian corn. His vrouw, of course, was sitting, as usual, in a large chair, doing nothing; but he hospitably produced the Cape Smoke, which was made from figs, and as we drank our sopie, we patiently listened to a long account of his losses and grievances, having already acquired sufficient Dutch to converse fluently and understand all he said. After duly reciting all his troubles, which by the way had not affected his bodily frame much, he led us into the vineyard, where we found abundance of the most deliciously flavoured grapes, one sort, called the "honey-pot," especially so, and of immense size. The vineyards are of considerable extent, and the vines kept in standard bushes about the size of a large gooseberry tree.
The manufacture of Cape wines, Pontac, and Cape Smoke, is very considerable; the latter is a kind of whiskey, of a peculiar, and to many, disagreeable flavour. The best is obtained from grapes, though it is also made from figs and peaches. At all the farms were large vineyards; those in the vicinity of the post carefully tended, but a few miles distant, at the deserted houses, grew in wild untrimmed luxuriance, the ripe grapes dropping to the ground unheeded.
The vintage is an odd and picturesque scene; strings of Fingo women and girls, bear baskets of white and purple grapes on their heads to the vats, where the men tread them out, singing monotonous ditties, while the big drops of perspiration fall plentifully from their shining faces, and mingle with the rich juice oozing from between their black toes.
One of our daily patrolling parties returned on the 19th with a boy and a couple Hottentot women prisoners. They had been robbing a neighbouring farm, and were caught returning to the Waterkloof with their skin-sacks filled with half-ripe fruit and vegetables. We got out of them on cross-examination, that on the day of their last attack, when we pursued them with twenty horsemen only, that they had five Kaffirs killed on the field, and nine others, Kaffirs and Totties, wounded, several of whom had since died. We also learned that the enemy were meditating an attack upon us that night or the night following. In consequence of this warning, the truth of which there was no reason to doubt, we brought the cattle within walls at sunset, doubled the sentries after tattoo, and kept a sharp look out. About midnight the silence was gradually broken by the cries of night-hawks and hyænas, and the barking of jackals answering each other far and near round the walls, which, however, were in reality the signals of savages apprising their confederates of our unexpected state of preparation. After a time, the sounds, so admirably imitated, grew less frequent, till they died away altogether. The morning showed us the soft ground marked on three sides of the fort with the prints of bare feet and veldt schoenen.
Every evening we continued to be visited by most appalling storms of thunder and lightning, but generally without rain. The continued peals rolled and echoed in a most imposing manner among the surrounding mountains. A Hottentot boy was killed one afternoon by the lightning.
Christmas Day had now come round, but instead of snow outside, and a roaring fire within, it was a roasting, broiling midsummer day, too hot to stir till after sunset, when we sat on the stoep unbonnetted and in shirt sleeves, smoking far into the night, listening to the shrill chirp of the cicada and piping of the bullfrog, and talking of home and distant friends. We had neither wine nor grog to drink to their health and happiness, but pledged them cordially in coffee.
The Boers reporting a body of rebels to be living in one of the deserted farms of the Koonap valley, we set out with a party of mounted men to look them up; but, as far as the object of our ride was concerned, we had our trouble for nothing. We went round the foot of the hills by an extremely difficult path, along the face of a steep declivity overhanging the rocky bed of the river; up steep shingly ascents, and down steps or ledges of rock four or five feet deep, our horses jumping nimbly down after us, as none but Cape horses could. The farm was tenantless, and still as death, though there was plenty of spoor quite fresh; a small fire was still smouldering in one of the roofless chambers, and the ground under the fruit trees, which were perfectly stripped, was thickly trampled. The rebels had decamped, and were probably looking down on us from the mountain crags above.
We killed here an immense cobra capello, which rose erect a full yard above the long grass; spreading out his broad flat hood, he darted most savagely after a dog, and at a pace I should have thought impossible for anything in the form of a snake. Returning by the hill, we put up a fine leopard, or, as it is invariably called, a tiger, and got several shots as it bounded down the mountain side, but, from the extraordinary way in which it doubled and leaped, we all missed it.
December 31st.—A convoy of waggons from Fort Beaufort, with supplies for our garrison, having come within a few miles of us, and stuck fast at the foot of a steep mountain road, called Botha's Rant, we went down at dawn with all the available force that could be spared, to their assistance. Each waggon had to be unloaded before it could be moved a single foot up the steep slippery path, and the men had every sack and barrel to carry up to the top of the hill.