Taking advantage of the additional force of this escort, we made a patrol into Kaal Hoek, where parties of rebel Hottentots were said to be living on the deserted farms. Bruce, with about two hundred infantry, took up a position a few miles from the Post, on a high hill commanding the country below; while I, with a party of about twenty-five mounted men, made a circuit through the valley from south to north, encountering some very bad and dangerous ground. Several of the party got severe falls in deep holes hidden by the long waving grass that reached to our saddle girths; one entirely disappeared, horse and all, in a collection of holes made by the ant-bears, and dislocated his wrist. In fact, it was always rather nervous work riding over these plains, which every body does at a canter; for, independently of the fall, if one happens to be in the rear of a party, the chances are ten to one against the accident being noticed; and then, as the horses usually take themselves off on such occasions, the unlucky rider is left on foot to the mercy of lurking Kaffirs, and probably with some bodily hurt, or a broken rifle. This may account for the rate at which such parties invariably ride, as every one tries to keep his horse well up in front.
In our progress each deserted farm was surrounded and carefully examined; but, though the spoor was plentiful, it was nowhere less than two days old, and no one was to be found. The crops had been carried off half-ripe, and every fruit tree stripped bare. We came in our route on the remains of the Tottie woman accidentally killed by the Dutchmen; her skull and a few rags were all that was to be seen. After a circuit of about thirty miles, we returned to the Post, where we found one of our men, M'Linden, at his last breath; he died very soon after, having been ill only a few hours. Two days previously he had helped in building a wall of loose stones round the graves of our departed comrades buried outside the fort, and now, before our work was half completed, he had found his last resting-place in the same enclosure. He was a brave soldier, and we followed his body to the grave with real sorrow.
CHAPTER X.
BUSHMAN PAINTINGS—LOCUSTS—RETURN Of TRANS-KEI EXPEDITION.
Jan. 1st. 1852.—A small party of the Boers, who had gone out in the morning to reconnoitre the Zuurberg heights, on which the smoke of a Kaffir fire had been visible all the previous day, returned in the afternoon with the intelligence that they had been sharply engaged with a much larger body of rebels, strongly posted among the crags. They had killed three of the enemy, but were obliged to abandon the attempt to dislodge them with so small a party. It was determined to attack them at early dawn the following morning. For this purpose the Field-Cornet was ordered to warn all the Burghers in his district to attend the rendezvous.
A couple of hours' riding brought us, by daybreak, to the foot of the mountain. The ascent was commenced, and soon became so steep that we had to dismount, and lead our horses up its rocky slope, till at last the large detached blocks became so frequent as to render that impossible, and leaving them on a small open plateau, with half a dozen men, we scrambled up the rest of the ascent on our hands and knees. Our trouble was in vain; for, after expecting at every step to be fired on, we finally stood in their deserted nest, which was thickly strewn with remains of fruit, corn, and vegetables, stolen from the gardens of the settlers in the valley. It was a curious and well-concealed retreat, under an enormous overhanging cliff, scored with the Boers' bullets of the day before; a large mass of rock and one or two thick bushes in front, making it nearly a cavern. There was a regular cooking place of stones; also a small cave for sleeping in, the floor being covered with a bed of dry grass, evidently very lately used, and stained here and there with blood. The smooth faces of the rock in this cave as well as the other places were covered with Bushmen paintings, not unlike in appearance to some of those on the tombs of Egypt. For the most part they represented animals of the chase, koodoo, gemsbok, hartebeeste, &c., with a dog or two, a man, an assegai, or bow and arrows. The execution was very good, and the colours, chiefly red, blue, black and white, still retained their brightness, though the country has been deserted by its former inhabitants, the Bushmen, for many years. The Boers said there was another cave at some distance, and high up on the same range, but much larger, and completely covered with similar paintings; but it was unsafe to visit it without a stronger party, and we had too many patrols to allow our finding either men or time for the purpose.
The Dutchmen believe them to be a century or two old, and allege that the Bushmen worshipped them; but though it is quite possible, yet there is no evidence to show it; and they were probably nothing more than a record of hunting achievements.
We had heard many persons speak of these paintings as curiosities very rarely found, and that only in remote districts, and were therefore as much surprised as pleased at finding them so near, though certainly in a sufficiently out-of-the-way place. I made a hasty sketch of some of them on the outside wrapper of a packet of cartridge. The whole locality was most beautiful; enormous detached masses of rock, scattered around, and stupendous cliffs of a bright yellow and orange colour, their crevices studded with bushes and scarlet and pink ivy-leaved geranium.
At mid-day on the 9th, a large body of the enemy, who had concealed themselves by night in the dry bed of a mountain torrent, suddenly rushed from their ambush, and having wounded a young man at work near the house, before he could seize his gun, instantly swept off the whole of Mynheer Rautenbach's horses, cattle, and sheep. The sound of shots, and especially the well-known "roer" of the old Dutchman, a huge weapon carrying a 4 oz. ball, gave us the alarm at the Post in a moment, though four miles off, for no idle firing was permitted. The alarm was taken up by the Fingoes on the look-out hills; the wall pieces at the Fort were fired as a signal to the Burghers, and in less than ten minutes a mounted party was rattling out of the barrack square, and galloping down the road amid clouds of dust. As we passed the two Laagers, some were loading their roers, others buckling on their powder-horns and pouches; while the "jungvrouws" were saddling the fresh-caught horses, for their fathers, husbands, and brothers; they soon overtook us by short cuts, and as we swept past old Rautenbach's barricaded house, our party was augmented to seventy or eighty men. At a turn in the lovely valley, which opened before us about a mile beyond the farm, we could see the enemy; the green sloping summit of the Zuurberg on our right, and half a mile further up the poort the cattle driven along by a party of mounted Kaffirs. With a shout of exultation we again dashed forward, rattling along the road in an exciting chase; the long manes and tails of the Dutchmen's horses streaming in the wind, the bullets whistling over our heads from the Kaffir-crowned heights, and the enemy before us straining every nerve to reach a narrow gorge, called Tiger's Kloof, the entrance to which was guarded by parties of their comrades posted among the fort-like rocks on either side. The ground presently became so full of hidden holes that in three or four minutes, as many of our party were down.