January 11.—The Trans-Kei expedition returned at this date to King William's Town, after six weeks in the field without tents, and exposed to deluges of rain among high grass. The refractory and treacherous chief, Kreli, had been severely punished; many of his men killed; 30,000 head of cattle taken; 14,000 goats, and a great number of horses; besides 7000 Fingo slaves liberated, and brought away with their cattle, amounting to 30,000 more, all which had, of course, virtually belonged to Kreli. This crushing blow on the paramount chief of all the Kaffirs, produced a most salutary effect through the whole of Kaffirland.
On the last day of the month, a commando of mounted Boers having joined us from Tarka the previous day, we started at 2 A.M., with all our available horsemen, the party altogether about 100 strong, to patrol the Koonap district. It was a fine moonlight morning, and as, for the first few miles, silence was not necessary, we trotted along with a cheerful sound of horses' hoofs, clanking stirrups, and jingling arms, mingled with a Babel of tongues, English and Dutch, Gaelic, broad Scotch, and Fingo. On reaching Kaal Hoek, and finding that we were a little too early, we off-saddled, and in silence, each one at his horse's head, waited for daylight, in front of a belt of wood on the hill-side, which echoed with the cries of wild pintados, as the sky brightened with the coming dawn.
We rode round by Bushneck, and from the heights could see a few stray Kaffirs moving across the Waterkloof valley far below. Thence we proceeded, over hill and plain, under a burning sun, through the Koonap district, passing many deserted farms, their orchards bent down with the weight of unheeded fruit, and threading our way by deep bush and eddying river, where, excepting the chattering of the flocks of brilliant scarlet bunting,[19] which built their pensile nests, and flitted among the tall papyrus, the silence and solitude were oppressive. Now and then we came on the print of naked feet and the remnants of half eaten prickly-pears, but the spoor was old, and consequently useless. On many of the mimosas, we observed large clusters of a very beautiful parasitical plant, a Loranthus, with dark glossy leaves, and orange coloured flowers.
After having descended the side of a steep rocky mountain where it was necessary to alight and lead our horses, I was in the act of remounting, when my horse suddenly started off at a gallop, and taking the bit in his mouth, left me at his mercy, with one foot in the stirrup and a loaded rifle in my hand. The saddle being loose, turned round, and after a short but mad career, down we came on the stones with a crash that made the sparks fly from my eyes; the next moment I found myself in the centre of a ring of kind-hearted Boers, eager to render me assistance; one trying to mend my favourite rifle, which was smashed to pieces, others offering water, and two or three feeling me all over, to ascertain whether any bones were broken. Happily I had not sustained any serious injury, though sufficiently severe to render me very unequal to the exertion of riding thirty miles further in the sun, over a country becoming at every step more rugged and difficult. Sometimes we had to cross roaring drifts of the Koonap with slippery shelving rocks, that frequently launched horse and rider into deep eddying pools; or, bent double on the saddle-bows, pushed our way through thorny thickets of vacht um bidtge,[20] prickly-pear, and mimosa, occasionally creeping round some precipitous scaur, by a narrow and crumbling track, where a false step of our nimble and active steeds would have hurled us into the river beneath.
The sun was so hot, that my leg and thigh, from which the trews had been completely torn, became blistered by its burning rays, and continued very painful for many days after.
At Viljoens farm, we surprised a small party of Kaffirs robbing and destroying. A brisk scrimmage took place; three or four of them were killed, and some women captured, whom we liberated after getting all the information we could out of them, which was, as usual, very little.
Never had the sight of the little fort been more welcome than on that sultry evening, after sixteen hours patrolling over more than fifty miles of broken country, and the last thirty miles of it in great pain. I did not leave my bed for many days; the heat of the weather, and the peculiar tendency of the atmosphere to aggravate every wound, however trivial, rendering mine both tedious and troublesome.
A few days after our return, some little excitement was caused in our isolated community, by the report of a mounted party approaching through the glen. It proved to be a patrol from the Blinkwater camp, which, having fallen in with the enemy, and captured twelve horses, and killing also sundry Kaffirs without any casualty on their own side, had been prevented returning by the timely and fortunate discovery that their pass was "forelaid" by a very strong body of the enemy; consequently they had made for our post, which they reached safely with all their booty, completely outwitting the cunning savages.