After a two hours' rest the main column moved up the valley to the head of the Waterkloof, two parties being detached to our right, one to attack a small body of Kaffirs collected above us, and commanding our intended ascent; the other up the south scarps to intercept the flight of any dislodged parties in that direction.
After a stiff pull up the Pass, we found the 60th Rifles posted in the bush along the path covering our ascent, and on the open ground above, several more companies of that regiment and the 91st, with many old friends. Crossing the Horseshoe Flat, we entered the belt of forest dividing it from the Kromme range beyond, and found the well-remembered path lined by the 60th Rifles, who, as we passed, presented us with cigars and brandy-and-water, on the very spot where, on former occasions, we had been treated by the Kaffir Rifles to volleys of bullets. A short, but at that advanced hour, most weary march across the open ground, brought us, after dark, to our bivouac on a bleak bare ridge, where, from the rocky nature of the ground, we broke nearly all the pegs of our patrol-tents without eventually succeeding in pitching them. The following morning, by daylight, we were on the move, and separating into four bodies, again scoured the kloofs on the south side and head of the Waterkloof, and crowned the Iron Mountain, throwing rockets into the inaccessible retreats, killing several Kaffirs and burning numerous huts. The Fingoes skirmished with unusual activity, being in great awe of the Inkosi Ameshlomani (the Four Eyed Chief), as both they and the Kaffirs called Colonel Eyre, from the circumstance of his wearing spectacles, to which they attributed his great vigilance and sharpness; whenever they exhibited the slightest hesitation to obey the order to enter the bush, he rode right at them, laying his jambok about their shoulders, and drove them before him into the cover. They did not, however, entertain the same respect for everybody, for, on another occasion, when a young Levy officer tried the same discipline, he was unceremoniously tumbled off his horse and pitched into a thorn-bush!
At the gorge of the Waterkloof, Colonel Eyre with his Staff and escort rode on, leaving the Column with me, with orders to rejoin the main body, four miles up the Waterkloof valley. We proceeded to the entrenched field-works just thrown up at Nels, where we halted at ten, A.M., for breakfast. The officers' pack-horses having been sent with one of the other columns, by a more practicable road, we had nothing to eat, but Captain Jesse, R.E., commanding the camp there, kindly brought us a loaf, a cold leg of mutton, and a bottle of Cape wine, absolute luxuries to fasting men. Thence we marched up the valley, which at this season, spring, was as fragrant as beautiful with flowering plants and bushes, the Boer-boon, covered with thick clusters of crimson blossom, conspicuous above every other. The larger trees along the rocky stream were alive with monkeys leaping from bough to bough. We rejoined the column at Brown's farm, and a party of Fingoes arrived at the same time with a despatch from the Governor-General, who, on the heights above, was personally directing the whole of the movements. We ascended the valley—a long line of red-coats, Riflemen, Highlanders, Artillery, Mounted Irregulars, and Fingoes; the Kaffir prisoners, with the pack-horses and mules bringing up the rear. At a point where the valley branches off into two, we took the south branch, and the Fingoes were sent up the mountain on our right to scour the bush. They continued ascending the green slopes, till scarcely visible, and then entering the forest at the foot of the perpendicular basaltic rocks, sharp firing at once began; tracing their progress by the wreaths of smoke that curled up above the dark trees, we regulated our movements below by their advance. Heavy firing was heard in the mean time from the north side of the valley. After gradually working our way to the top of the kloof, the Fingoes emerged from the forest, which ended abruptly at that point, driving before them a score or two of Kaffir women and children, and a few sore-backed horses. The women, like those before taken, had their woolly hair entwined with the claws and teeth of wild beasts, and wore karosses of hide, finely dressed, and dyed black with mimosa bark, of which all the larger trees here had been stripped. The unexpected meeting of these fresh prisoners with those previously taken was an affecting sight to witness. All were in a most wretched state of emaciation and weakness, having been nearly starved for want of food, and subsisting entirely on leaves, roots, and berries; their arms and legs were more like black sticks than human limbs. Cruel as their capture may appear, it was in reality a respite from misery and starvation, and moreover was rendered absolutely necessary, for, in their way, they were no less enemies to the tranquillity of the country than the men, acting as sentinels, commissaries, and spies, bringing food (which they might not touch), ammunition and information from our very towns and camps, most materially thwarting our efforts to bring the war to an end. The Tottie women did not appear to consider it at all a misfortune to be taken, for being unaccustomed to a bush life and its precarious means of subsistence in such times, they preferred a dry bed in a jail, with prison diet, to liberty and starvation. Our Fingo allies wished to put the prisoners to death; and were sulky at not being allowed to carry out their notions of warfare. A female prisoner, unable to keep up with the rest, was shot dead by one of these fellows before we had the least idea of his intention; so instantaneous was the act that my horse nearly stumbled over her body as it fell in the path. It required all the exertions of the officers to prevent further cruelties, nor was a stop put to them, till several of these half-tamed savages were knocked down and made prisoners of. One of the Kaffir women, with a child of a few weeks old on her back, becoming too exhausted to carry it, deliberately threw it away; it was, however, picked up by an officer, and given to a Fingo, with orders to carry it to the camp; the fellow obeying with a ludicrous mixture of disgust and nonchalance to the intense amusement of his comrades. But next morning the infant was missing, when "Johnny" being questioned as to what he had done with it, replied with the greatest coolness imaginable, that it had escaped during the night.
On another occasion, one of them, when sentry over a Kaffir, was observed giving a knife to his charge, and making signs to him to cut the rheim which secured his feet to a gun-wheel; the Kaffir was in doubt for a little, but reassured by the friendly nods and signs of his keeper, severed the bands and jumped up, but only to be shot dead by the sentry, who reported the attempted escape of the prisoner.
These, and a few other like instances of barbarity which occurred, hardly any degree of watchfulness could have entirely prevented. It was also next to impossible, amongst a set of men always ready to screen a culprit, to bring home conviction to the real offender; and doubtless, many more cases of barbarity would have taken place but for the presence and exertions of the troops. Yet the Fingoes acted in accordance with the practice of savage warfare rather than from cruel or vindictive feelings; and had they and the Kaffirs alone been opposed one to the other, it is more than probable that every woman and child taken by either side would have been put to death.
After climbing the steep rocky hill at the head of the kloof, the men resting every few yards from exhaustion, we proceeded some miles further along the range, and again prepared to bivouac on the top of the mountains, but had scarcely taken up our ground, when torrents of rain descended, running into our patrol-tents before a drain could be dug round them. The men having only a single blanket, and that of course soaked through, sat all night by the fires in the storm; a keen searching wind sweeping over the mountain top, rendered the night so intensely chilling, that sleep was out of the question, and at four o'clock when the reveillé sounded, every one was glad to be moving. The wind and sleet at this hour were even colder than before, and though we scorched our clothes on one side at the fires, the other clung to us like so much ice. At the head of the Wolfsback Pass we came up to the 60th Rifles lining the bush. They were half frozen, and envied us being on the march. The mountain tops all round were again white with snow, and on the opposite heights we could see the other Division shelling the deep intervening kloof, an unbroken forest of great extent; the effect, as the shells exploded far below our feet, was very fine. We descended the steep pass in single file, winding through the narrow forest, and halted at Blakeway's farm, where we found the sun quite hot. The almond and peach trees in the deserted garden were covered with sheets of pink blossom. A party of Cape Corps had arrived a few minutes before, under Captain Carey, with 200 sheep which they had captured in the kloof.
In an hour we were again climbing the Kromme range by another path more to the eastward, and gaining the ridge, looked down on the other side into Harrys Kloof, in the bottom of which a small body of the 91st and Cape Corps were halted; the long narrow ridge separating it from Fullers Hoek beyond was smoking from end to end with burning huts. We continued ascending the ridge up to the heights, two companies below scouring the forest kloof as we advanced by a wood path so close, that though we marched single file, the whole column had to halt every twenty yards till the front could move on, the bugles sounding the halt and advance from front to rear by companies. We came to an immense collection of burnt-out Kaffir fires, and places for sentinels on points commanding most extensive prospects of the beautiful country below. All round where we stood was thickly covered with pellets of chewed root. In front there was some firing, and a few Kaffirs were killed, who lay in the thickets as we came up. In one part of the shady path, we came suddenly on the corpse of a rebel deserter hanging from a tree; the blood trickling from a bullet hole in his forehead ran down his face and dropped on his toes.
No sooner had we toiled to the heights, where a detachment of the 60th Rifles was covering our movements, than we again descended by another more difficult and more precipitous path, down which men and horses slid twenty or thirty yards at once into Harrys Kloof, which was penetrated, and crossed in five different directions.
At the bottom of the descent we set fire to a very large village of Kaffir huts, and captured some horses. Part of the column being sent up the kloof by a path on the right, the rest of us, under Colonel Eyre, passed through the smouldering village, its heat almost overpowering, and penetrated to the head of the kloof, which was one dense, dark, and tangled forest up to the heights on which the tiny figures of the 60th were barely visible against the bright sky. The whole column worked through it in every direction, guided by constant bugling; the company and regimental calls of the different corps, with "advance," "retire," "right and left incline," &c.,—being all issued by Colonel Eyre, who, with a bugler of each regiment at his side, thus conducted in the most splendid style the movement of upwards of a thousand men in different bodies, unseen, through an extensive mountain forest. A few head of cattle and some horses were taken, and some of the enemy killed.