For four succeeding days, the Columns completely traversed every part of the Blinkwater, Fullers Hoek, Kromme, and Waterkloof. Our party was during the same time patrolling on the heights of these mountain ranges, preventing escape on the part of the enemy; cutting off such small parties as, more daring than the rest, attempted it; capturing horses and cattle, and skirmishing along the whole eastern ridge of the Waterkloof. The operations of the different columns had been most successful; one after another, the whole of the enemy's positions had been taken. On the first day, Lieut.-Col. Eyre's column, in eight parties of attack, ascended the steep and difficult paths of Fullers Hoek, and driving the enemy before them, in spite of a stout resistance, crowned the summits and destroyed their villages. On the second day he attacked "the Den," celebrated as the especial and private stronghold of Macomo, said indeed to be impregnable. The entrance, a sort of natural stair in the rocks, had been discovered to us by a female prisoner. All the guns were brought to bear against it, and their fire told fearfully among the defenders. The place was carried, and in its recesses were found 130 women; among them, Macomo's Great Wife, a royal Tambookie of considerable importance in the tribe, together with several others standing in the same relation to him, though less distinguished. Among the rocks were quantities of apparel and provisions, with powder, lead, and bullet-moulds. The whole of the women were taken off prisoners, and the Den completely destroyed. Twenty dead bodies of Kaffirs were found, killed by the guns, independently of those that fell in the assault. We had the misfortune to lose a gallant young officer, Lieutenant the Hon. H. Wrottesley, 43rd Light Infantry, who was mortally wounded, and died afterwards in camp; three men of the 73rd were also killed, and some wounded.
During this attack, Colonels Napier and Michel ascended respectively the Kromme and Waterkloof heights, dragging their guns by dint of incredible exertions up almost impracticable steeps (the former being sharply engaged), drove the rebels from their positions, and then, acting in concert, destroyed all their kraals.
On the 15th, Colonel Napier captured 130 head of cattle and many horses, taking fifty women and children prisoners, and killing several of the rebels. The 60th Rifles, under Captain the Hon. A. Hope, attacking the Iron Mountain, on which the enemy took his final stand, forced them from the position with fixed swords, and they were pursued and driven over the Krantzes, with great loss, by the remainder of the 60th, under Major Bedford, 560 head of cattle and 75 horses falling into their hands.
After this the enemy fled through the country in all directions, making chiefly for the Amatolas.
Simultaneously with the above combined movements, an attack, with like success, had been made by Lieut.-Col. Perceval, on the Chief, Stock, in the Fish River bush.
While Captain Tylden and his Burghers were still with us at Post Retief, the friendly Kaffir Chief, Kama, a faithful and valued ally of the government, arrived with a retinue on his way back to his village, after an interview with the Governor-General, and encamped outside the walls for the night. He accepted with great politeness our invitation to mess. He had been to request His Excellency not to make peace with the Gaikas or Kreli, until the whole of the former had crossed the Kei. In the progress of the war he took the most lively interest; and though his Great Wife was sister to Macomo, expressed his anxiety to see him vanquished and driven from his stronghold. He had left his own territory previous to the commencement of the last war, disapproving of the intentions of his countrymen, and feeling his consequent insecurity among them. His lands he placed in the hands of the British Representative to hold in trust for him, and with about 200 families of his tribe, removed into the colony, residing at this time at Kamastone, a location assigned him near Whittlesea. He had done good and faithful service through the whole of the present war, taking the field with his sons and all his fighting men, of whom many had been killed by the enemy. He appeared at dinner in a black coat and a clean shirt; behaved in a quiet, self-possessed manner; took wine, and used his knife and fork as if he had been familiar with such things all his life. His appetite, or politeness, was wonderful, taking everything that was offered him; and if he was not ill after it, his digestion was not less so.
Sir H. Smith marched from the Blinkwater camp on the 17th with the Second Division under his own immediate command, to attack a body of Rebels and Kaffirs who, under the Chief Tyali, had taken up a position in the Chumie, General Somerset at the same time following up the flying enemy towards the N.E. frontier. As a natural consequence of the breaking up of their main body, the country was filled with scattered parties, robbing and attacking the settlers everywhere, so that our duties in patrolling became more than ever arduous; hardly a day passed in which we did not go out, and few patrols returned without having had some affair on hand.
A six-pounder gun, with its complement of artillerymen, was despatched for our garrison from Beaufort, to shell the impervious ravines in which we could occasionally see the Kaffirs from the table-land above. At two in the morning we went with a party of seventy men to the top of the Blinkwater Pass to meet it. While waiting there, we could distinctly hear the Kaffirs and their dogs in the forest below. Presently our ears recognised the echoing report of the waggon whip, which gradually neared, and soon the red coats of the 91st came in sight on an open piece of road at our feet. As we returned to the Post with our new acquisition, we put up whole coveys of partridges, though our rifle and pistol practice at them did not add much to the larder.
Next day we went out to shell a cluster of deserted wood-cutters' huts, down in the valley below Bothas bush, which had, the day before, been reported as inhabited by the Kaffirs. Three or four shells burst right over them. One or two Kaffirs were seen, by the glass, making their escape; and two others catching a couple of horses, that looked at the distance, no bigger than dogs. In less than five minutes after the report of the gun, the thick smoke of a Kaffir signal (one can hardly call it a fire) ascended in the still air at a distance of about eight miles, and very soon after three or four others rose in succession on the more distant ranges.
On the 7th April, Lieut.-General Cathcart, the newly-appointed Governor-General assumed the command; and Sir Harry Smith, our gallant and highly-esteemed General, published his farewell, General Order:—