After two days across this kind of country, having only seen six rheebok in a wild rocky poort, we halted about a couple of miles from Whittlesea, a miserable forsaken-looking collection of Fingo kraals and small houses standing in the middle of a bare brown plain, enclosed by hills still browner and more bare. On the same plain, and about a mile distant, the white houses of Shiloh, a Moravian Missionary station, peeping from clumps of orange trees, looked very pretty, heightened in some measure from contrast with the surrounding sterility. Whittlesea has been rendered famous by the series of attacks it sustained, and gallantly withstood, under Captain Tylden, R.A., who no fewer than thirteen times defeated and put to flight large attacking bodies of Tambookies and Rebel Hottentots. This was our most remote Post; and here we were joined by the Grenadier Company of the 74th, which for some little time had been encamped at the Settlement.
We left the plain by another steep hill, having been gradually ascending from the time of leaving Beaufort; through the whole distance, and as far as we went up the country it was a series of steppes rising higher the further we penetrated. At the top of this hill we entered on a vast plain, stretching away to the foot of the bare rugged mountains in the far distance. Colonel Eyre's column was again seen about four miles ahead.
We encamped for the night at the Brak River, on the open plain; a dreary lonely spot. Close to our camp were three kraals, in which as many Tambookie herdsmen and their families were living. They were quite naked and very wretched looking. The women brought us goats' milk, in grass baskets, for sale. Their idea of the value of money, which they were very anxious to get, lay in the number of pieces, refusing a sixpence for a basket of sour milk, but accepting two silver three-penny pieces with sparkling eyes.
After marching about four miles next morning we came to Kamastona, the 'great place' of the friendly Chief, Kama. His dwelling, a high substantial building, stood in the centre of the village, which was a large collection of kraals, enclosed by earthen out-works. Its situation and appearance were rather striking, standing totally isolated on the plain, with a background of bare scarped mountains rising in rugged grandeur to a great height. Two miles further, and similarly situated, lay another circular village, a Tambookie settlement, their cattle and goats spread over the plain under a guard of armed natives, whose wild appearance was heightened by the surprise and wonder with which they regarded us.
The grass herbage was now succeeded by karroo plains, covered with a kind of dwarf heath which the cattle and horses had to put up with. We crossed the Zwart Kei, at Stoffel Venter's, a Dutch Boer's farm, lonely enough to satisfy any hermit; the sound of the bagpipes brought out a family of lazy-looking Dutchmen, with pipes in their mouths and hands in their breeches pockets, with one or two fat women, who waddled out and bumped down on the bench outside the door, followed by a knot of bare-legged dirty children, looking as phlegmatic as their seniors.
For miles along the vast plain, which was interspersed with isolated mountains and rocky hills, we beheld in the distance the lofty and singular mountain, called "Twa Taffel Berg," with its two table-topped summits.
After seventeen miles we crossed the Honey Klip River, running between high jungley banks, and halted for the night; but before the waggon-train with our tents could get up, a thunder storm, which for some time had been brewing in dark indigo clouds, burst over our heads, and we were soaked to the skin by a tremendous down pour of rain, which completely flooded the ground.
Since our departure from Elands Post, where we took leave of trees and shrubs, we had been entirely dependent for fuel on the dry dung of cattle and wild game, scattered over the plains; following in the rear of the other Column, which left but small gleanings behind it, our men had to go far a-field, often wandering, after a long day's march, a mile or two from the camp to get sufficient to boil their coffee. Indeed, so scarce and valuable was this commodity, that many used their pockets and haversacs as receptacles for such portions as they were lucky enough to pick up by the way.
It was a ten miles' march next morning before we came to water for breakfast. The heat was very great, and increased to an overpowering degree on entering a narrow rocky defile, called Klaas Smidt's Poort, out of which, after a three miles march, we emerged on a measureless level plain, bounded only by the outlines of blue mountains, which danced hazy and indistinct in the heated air. In this cheerful situation was a solitary Dutch farm-house; all around littering, untidy, and neglected, with three or four huts to match for the Fingo servants. Mrs. Grant's Glenburnie was a pattern of neatness in comparison. Several of the inmates, for it was a Laager, afterwards galloped over on rough little horses to our camp, which was pitched two miles beyond. Their astonishment at the bagpipes, and not less at the dress of the Pipers, was extreme, crowding round them with childish wonder, as they goodnaturedly played reels, marches, strathspeys, and pibrochs; unconsciously to themselves, they were little less objects of curiosity in our eyes, differing so much from the Anglicised Boer of the colony; stout heavy-built fellows, in short round jackets of purple or sky-blue moleskin, with huge broad-brimmed white hats, wrapped round with a band of black crape, which a Dutchman wears not as a sign of grief but a sort of finish to his beaver; stockingless feet thrust into rough home-made veldt-schoenen, with a heavy spur on the left one; a small jambok hanging from his wrist; a clumsy roer; cow-horn powder-flask at the side, and an untanned leather bullet-pouch—these, with a green-stone pipe sticking in the mouth or out of the waistcoat pocket, completed their equipment. The only subject on which they became at all animated, was guns and shooting; they were as much pleased as surprised at the practice of some of our best shots with the Minié rifle at ant-heaps at 1000 yards range. Though the roer, from its large bore and weight of metal, carries a great distance, it is not at all an accurate weapon, as might be expected from its extraordinary make and finish; an immense shapeless stock, a rough flint lock, and an ivory 'sight' as large as a domino.
After trekking over miles the following morning we halted for breakfast at the foot of the Stormberg mountains, another steppe, or range, stretching east and west as far as the eye could see. The road up being steep and winding, the effect was very peculiar, as at every turn portions of the column were seen one above another, while the long train of waggons and the distant rear-guard were still creeping along the plain below. We had a broiling climb of it; on gaining the top, a vast green plain was again before us, and after some miles further we camped near a large vley of thick muddy water. The night, in this elevated region, was as cold as the day had been hot in the sultry plains, and though we piled every available article on our beds, we could not keep warm. On striking a light next morning at the 'Rouse' to dress and pack up by, the walls of the tent glistened and sparkled with frozen moisture, and the water in the basin was covered with a coating of ice as thick as a half-crown. The poor horses felt the cold severely; their bodies drawn together quite benumbed, and the moisture from their breath hanging in hoar frost about their nostrils. The mountain tops all round were white with snow. It was, no doubt, the sudden change of temperature, together with our light dress, that made the cold so particularly severe, as I have felt far less inconvenience in a Canadian winter, with the mercury frozen in the thermometer.