1874–8--ALDERSHOT: SOUTH AFRICA
Civic hospitality--Garrison instruction--E. R. P.
Woodgate--I decline to be permanent Examiner for
Promotion--Thomas White invites me to join him in
business--Am offered the Commandantship of Staff College--A
Glassite--“War-Game”--Sandilli--The Gaikas--The Fingoes--The
Perie Bush--Rupert Lonsdale.
Soon after our return from the West Coast we were honoured by a command
to Windsor, officers of the rank of Lieutenant-Colonel and upwards only
being invited to dine at the Royal table and to remain the night at the
Castle.
I had intended to postpone being called to the Bar, but my friend and
tutor Captain Blake, Royal Marines, thinking I might be too busy later
to read further, advised me to apply at once, and I was called during
the Easter term.
At a Dinner given by the Lord Mayor to Sir Garnet and the Ashanti
warriors, I sat near the Prime Warden of the Fishmongers’ Company, and
in the course of conversation he learnt I was a grandson of Sir Matthew
Wood, which resulted in my being invited to join the Livery of that
Company, which I did a few weeks later.
At another Civic Feast I sat next to a retired Rear Admiral, who was
annoyed at Sir John Glover’s name being noted to return thanks for
the Navy. This was a mistake; for Glover, one of the most indomitable
of men, had left the Navy as a Lieutenant, with the honorary rank of
Captain, and the Admiral had reason, therefore, for his vexation, which
he showed throughout the dinner. He presumably must have seen my name
on the plan of the table, which he studied from time to time. In an
interval between two speeches he expressed to me an opinion shown by
the following conversation:--“A great deal of unnecessary fuss is being
made over these men who have been to Ashanti.” “Yes, sir.” “They have
done just nothing at all to what I did when I was there.” “Pray, when
was that, sir?” “In 1823.” “Oh, that was when Sir Charles Macarthy was
killed?” “Why, were you there?” “No, sir, I wasn’t there.” “Oh, but you
must have been--you know about it.” “No, I wasn’t there, but it has
been my business to read about what took place before we went there.”
“Well, I will tell you a remarkable story of what happened to me that
year. We were going up the Niger to attack a village at daybreak, and
although the days were hot, the nights were cold, and I was wearing
two pairs of trousers. We were fired on before we reached the village,
and a ball from a jingal nearly as big as my fist went in at my hip,
wrapping round it bits of both pairs of trousers.” “Really, sir, I
am thankful you are alive here to-night to tell the tale.” “Yes, but
more wonderful still, that ball went through my body and came out the
other side.” I had been sipping wine for three hours, and perhaps being
nettled by the Admiral’s disparaging remarks on my friends, observed
quickly, “What, sir, and both pairs of trousers wrapped round it?”
The moment I had spoken I reflected that he had distinguished himself
in trying to reach the North Pole, that he was old, and I had been
disrespectful; but I was immediately relieved by his cheerful answer,
“Yes, and that’s the most extraordinary part of my story--the bits of
both pairs of trousers came out with the ball”!
I received three months’ leave for the recovery of my health, at the
end of which I had hoped to join the Headquarters of my battalion at
Dover, but the Lieutenant-Colonel then in command did not wish to have
a full Colonel with him, who would often, in Field operations, have
command of the brigade, and persuaded my brother-officer and junior,
Major Rogers, to come from the Depot to Headquarters.
I joined at Hamilton on the 1st July, and the Officer in command of the
Depot, when I called on him, said to me politely, “Now, Colonel, there
is only enough work for one of us here, and I am fond of work.” I said,
“May I assume, then, that it is a matter of indifference to you where I
live, or how often I come into barracks?” “Quite so,” he assured me.
“Come when it suits your convenience, no oftener.” So I lived
pleasantly for two months in the Manse at Dalserf, immediately over
Mauldslie Castle, at which my wife and I spent half of each week.
The miners, who lived all around, were then earning high wages, and I
had great difficulty in obtaining milk for my family, until I called on
a farmer and asked him as a favour to let me have some, I sending for
it. He assented, though not graciously, observing, “Every man should
keep his ain coo.”
Early in September I was ordered to Aldershot as Superintending
officer of Garrison Instruction, with my office at that camp. Some
years previously there had been a serious outbreak of scarlatina at
Sandhurst, and the cadets had necessarily been removed, the College
not being re-opened for a considerable time. To educate the cadets,
whose studies had been interrupted, as well as with the average intake
of candidates through Sandhurst--about 300 per annum--classes were
formed in the principal garrisons of the United Kingdom, as far east
as Colchester, south as Shorncliffe and Cork, and in the north at
Edinburgh. The young gentlemen were gazetted to Regiments on probation,
and taught the Sandhurst course as far as possible by Staff College
graduates, in classes of from 15 to 25. My duty was to visit them as
often as I thought necessary, and see the Syllabus was duly followed,
and that Instructors and pupils were doing their best for the Service.
I learnt a good deal about schools in England, for as a rule I talked
to all the young men in the class, and they, with the feeling that
they were in the Army, gave me valuable information as to our Public
schools, the general tone of which was, according to the information I
received, undoubtedly very high.
The difficulties at some Stations in the way of regular teaching and
progress were serious, where the temptations for asking leave of
absence were unceasing. One Instructor complained bitterly to me.
“Although I have got,” he said, “as gentlemanlike a set of young men
under Instruction as it is possible to find in the whole world, it has
been heartbreaking to try and keep them together for concerted work.
First of all, their mammas and their sisters wanted them to dance
all night, while by day they were constantly away at Epsom, Ascot,
and Goodwood. Then I hoped, the Season being over, I should get them
to work, but with the middle of August came requests for leave for
grouse-shooting, followed in September by applications for a few days’
partridge-shooting, and early in October out-lying pheasants demanded
attention. Now one of the best young fellows in my class wants leave
for cub-hunting.” “Oh,” I said, “you should put your foot down; tell
him to cub-hunt at daylight, and get here at ten o’clock.” “He would
do that cheerfully,” was the answer, “but he is Master of the Hounds,
and his kennels are 200 miles from London”! I enjoyed my life, doing
most of the travelling in the summer and early autumn, and enjoying a
considerable amount of hunting. I took a house near the Staff College,
and after doing a day’s work in the office at Aldershot often got a
ride in the afternoon with the College drag hounds.
After riding with the drag, about tea-time one evening, my friend
Lieutenant E. R. P. Woodgate[135] walked up from Blackwater Station,
carrying his bag, and in his abrupt, decided way said, “Can you put
me up for the night? I want to talk to you.” “Yes, certainly.” After
dinner, he observed, “I want to go to the Staff College.” “Well, what
do you know?” “I was well taught at Sandhurst, but I have not read
much since.” Next morning, I gave him after breakfast a complete set
of examination papers, and observed, “Do as much of these as you can,
and I will look over them to-night after dinner.” As the result, I
said, “With two months’ instruction you would probably succeed in the
competition for entrance to the College, but it may take you three.”
“What will it cost me?” “About 20 guineas a month.” “Then I must
abandon the idea, for I have only got £14 available.” I thought of my
friend’s case in the night, and next day wrote to a tutor who had been
successful in teaching me, and whom I had obliged with a small loan
of money some years before. I made no allusion to the loan, but asked
him if he would, as a personal favour to me, teach my friend as much
as he could for £14. This he did, and so successfully that Woodgate
had no difficulty in getting into the College. He reappears farther
on in my story. The Council of Military Education were troubled by
the irregularities of Boards of Examination on officers for promotion,
for neither candidates nor Boards realised the discredit of “obtaining
aid from books or other sources,” and I was invited to become Examiner
for all Boards in Great Britain. Although the suggested salary was
tempting, I declined, explaining officers would, if trusted, come in
time to see their duty in its true light, while their hands would
always be against an individual, whose questions would moreover become
stereotyped.
In order to have a little money for my favourite sport of hunting, I
accepted the office of Examiner in Tactics, but it was monotonous work
reading 100 answers to the same questions.
My friend Major-General Arthur Herbert got me appointed to his Division
for the Autumn Manœuvres in the following year, and on the 23rd April
1876 I was appointed Assistant Quartermaster-General at Aldershot,
where I served with a pleasant, but one of the most determined men I
ever met in my career, Colonel George Harman, later Military Secretary.
He was a fine horseman, slight in build, but with a handsome,
aristocratic face, and never afraid of saying the most unpleasant
truths to his superior officers if he thought it was his duty to do
so. Not having been to the Staff College, he liked me to arrange the
tactical schemes, and to the best of my recollection I framed, and got
permission for, the first example of Minor Tactics, in June 1877, to be
carried out by Field officers. The idea was so popular that the system
took root, and has been continued to this day. Previously to this Drill
Season no officer under the rank of a General had had, as a rule, the
opportunity of handling the three Arms of the Service in tactical
operations.
In the spring of that year, towards the close of the hunting season,
I was at my brother-in-law’s, going through the accounts of his Irish
property, when I received a telegram saying that my eldest son, a child
of six years old, was ill, and Surgeon Alcock telegraphed to me to buy
some salicylate of soda, which was not then a drug supplied in Army
hospitals. When my wife and I reached the North Camp, I was warned by
my friend Alcock that the child was very ill, with a temperature of
104°, and that unless the salicylate of soda brought his temperature
down, he could not live. Alcock explained that the drug, although
often given in America, was not in common use in England, and its
effect was uncertain, so I watched with intense anxiety the effects
of three doses, given in close succession. We found the boy wrapped
in cotton-wool, with his knees drawn up to his chin, and he screamed
with the apprehension of being touched before I got to the bedside.
Within an hour the painful look in his face relaxed, and after the
third dose had been swallowed his knees gradually resumed a natural
position, and the child slept, being able the same evening to look at
the picture-books we had purchased for him as we passed through London.
He recovered, but eight years later had a second, though less severe
attack, which obliged me to remove him from Wellington College, and
I was compelled to have him watched with great care for two years,
allowing him to do but very little work. I was advised by three of the
leading physicians in London, who examined him, that it was hopeless to
expect he would be able to do anything but sedentary work.
Six years later, when the lad wished to enter the Army, I took him to
one of the Doctors who had given the unfavourable opinion and asked
him to re-examine him, as I should not feel justified as a General in
allowing him to go up, unless I were satisfied he was sound, whatever
the Medical Board might decide. After a severe test the opinion was
favourable, and four years later he hunted successfully the Regimental
pack of Foot beagles.
I had what I always consider was a flattering offer about this time
from Mr. T. White the Outfitter (a miniature Whiteley), who supplied
most of the officers and non-commissioned officers of the Aldershot
Division. When he was a young man, working in his father’s small shop
at Hartley Row, on the Bagshot-Basingstoke Road, His Royal Highness the
Prince Consort, having induced the Treasury to purchase 10,000 acres,
initiated the Aldershot Camp. Mr. White came to Aldershot, which was
then only a hamlet, and prospered with the rising town. He was not
only my provider, but a friend for many years; indeed, our business
relations commencing in 1866 have continued without intermission with
the Firm until this date, and every time I have gone on Service
my telegraphic requisition has been, “Send me what you think is
necessary.” This confidence has always been justified. When Sir Daniel
Lysons commanded the 1st Brigade, he and I worked a good deal with
Mr. White, inventing and improving camp equipment for officers, whose
amount of baggage was then closely limited; and later the General and I
went through Mr. White’s books on a proposition being made to start a
Local ready-money establishment, similar to the Army and Navy Stores.
[Illustration: COLONEL WOOD’S QUARTERS, ALDERSHOT, 1876–77]
Mr. White coming to me one day, asked for a private interview, in which
the following dialogue occurred:--“Colonel, you have been of great
use to me about Camp Equipment and with your advice generally, and
I have been thinking for some time that I should like to make you a
proposition, but I hope if it displeases you you will forgive me.” I
said, “What is it?” “Can I induce you to leave the Service, and join me
in business?” “Yes, the subject would require thought as to terms, but
if they were sufficiently good I would consider it for the sake of my
children.” “Well, may I ask what terms you would require?”
After ten minutes’ calculation, I replied, “£3000 a year taken out of
your business, and invested in any security approved by me, payable
to me as long as I wish to retain it, irrespective of the time and
attention I give to the business, or to our agreeing or disagreeing
on any points.” Mr. White jumped, nearly falling off his chair, and
observed, “£3000 a year is a large sum: pray may I ask what your pay
is now, sir?” “£664, including allowances.” “The difference, you will
allow me to say, is very great.” “It is, yet not so great as the
difference in serving Her Majesty Queen Victoria and Thomas White.”
“Oh, sir, I am afraid I have vexed you.” “No; on the contrary, you have
paid me a greater compliment as to my capacity for business than I am
likely to receive from anyone else.”
In August, my friend General W. Napier, the Governor of the Military
College, Sandhurst, offered me the post of Commandant there, under him.
All my relations with him and with his family had been of the happiest
description, but I did not like the idea of settling down at Sandhurst
before I commanded a battalion; this feeling influenced me again when
I was informed I might be considered for the Staff College. Moreover,
I thought Colonel Colley,[136] then Military Secretary to Lord Lytton,
Viceroy of India, would make a far better Commandant of the Staff
College in every respect (except in personally encouraging the drag
hounds), and I asked a common friend to write and urge him to become a
candidate. Colley replied that he was engaged in too important work,
and I hesitated for some time as to whether I should ask for the post.
My Regiment was amongst the first upon the Roster for the Colonies, and
the prospect of serving as a Major on 16s. a day was not attractive
when balanced against the advantages of the Staff College--£1000 a
year, a good house, and the immediate proximity of Wellington College,
where I intended to send my sons.
When the offer was definitely made, I consulted Sir Alfred Horsford,
who had been one of my kindest friends ever since I served with him
in the North Camp at Aldershot. I pointed out the pecuniary and other
advantages, and when I had ceased speaking, he said, “Do you want my
frank opinion?” “Certainly, sir, please.” “Well,” he answered, “accept
it; and if your Regiment goes on Service you will be a miserable man
for the rest of your days.” This settled the question in my mind.
Early in November, when coming from Belhus, where Sir Garnet
Wolseley[137] and Colonel W. Butler[138] had been shooting, Butler
mentioned in the course of conversation that if worse news came from
the Cape, the 90th would be put under orders. Sir Garnet condoled
with me, for although he was in the War Office at the time he was not
aware of the state of the Roster for Foreign Service. He told me in
confidence then, what I had suspected for some time, that we were on
the brink of a war with Russia. Indeed, at Aldershot, not long before,
I had given a lecture on “The Passages of the Danube and the Passes of
the Balkans.”
The Ministry had intended to employ another General officer in Command,
but he having stipulated for a larger number of men than the Government
was willing to employ, at all events in the first instance, Lord
Beaconsfield’s choice fell on Sir Garnet, and he told me how much he
regretted that I should not be with him. I said, “Perhaps Cetewayo will
give us a fight,” but he replied, “No, Shepstone will keep him quiet
until we are ready.” Colonel Butler said, “When we fight Zulus, we
shall want 10,000 men, and I shall go out on the second wave of Special
Service officers.” And so he did.
The Officer commanding my Regiment was then, and may possibly have been
all his life, a “Glassite,” but had latterly accepted the idea that it
was immoral to fight. All the time I was at Aldershot I performed his
duties on Courts Martial, as he was unwilling to take an oath. At the
end of December, at his request, I accompanied him to London, when he
asked that he might be allowed to remain in England, on leave, till the
1st April 1878,[139] when his command would expire, and that I should
take out the battalion. He endeavoured to convey his wishes to the
Adjutant-General and Military Secretary, but entirely failed to make
them understand his position; indeed, I believe they imagined he was
suffering under some physical ailment, for the words he frequently used
were, that he “had the strongest reasons for not wishing to go into
Camp.”
He embarked on the 11th January, and on the 27th I followed the
battalion, having indeed been very unhappy since I saw them off at
Southampton with the band playing “Far away.”
The battalion had its complement of Lieutenant-Colonel and two Majors,
I (the Senior), being on the Staff, was supernumerary, so when a month
later I was sent out, it was “On Special Service,” with the promise
given to me verbally by the Commander-in-Chief, the Adjutant-General,
and the Military Secretary, confirmed in a Memorandum which was handed
to General Thesiger, that I should succeed to the command on the 1st
April. But this understanding was not fulfilled.
The battalion on arriving at Cape Town was divided; five companies
were sent to Fort Beaufort, where the Gaikas were restless, and three
companies to Utrecht, in the Transvaal.
When I got to the Amatola Mountains, six weeks later, the five
companies were gradually withdrawn from the Colonel commanding, and he
remained in charge of some Hottentots at Fort Beaufort until June, when
he returned home, being retained in nominal command of the Regiment
till November, when he completed his thirty years’ service.
My fellow-passengers on board ship were General the Honourable F.
Thesiger, who was going out to Command at the Cape, Major Redvers
Buller, and other Staff officers. We arrived at East London, British
Kaffraria, on the 4th March, and a more uninviting spot than it was
then, it would be difficult to imagine. It consisted of corrugated iron
huts, surrounded by broken glass bottles and empty jam tins, dotted
about on bleak, bare sand-hills, through which the muddy Buffalo River
cut an opening 250 yards wide to the sea, depositing a barrier of sand,
which up to that time had presented insuperable difficulties to forming
a satisfactory harbour, although the problem had engaged the attention
of the most eminent of our British Marine Engineers. There were no
roads; the so-called hotel provided shelter and food, but while there
were bath towels there were no baths, and the one closet was common to
Whites of both sexes and Kafir servants.
A few days before our arrival, two boatmen had been washed off a
lighter in crossing the bar and drowned, as capsizing in a heavy
roller it remained upside down. This fact, and the prospect of being
battened down in a chamber with my horses, and tossed about in the
rolling waves, added considerably to the interest of the arrangements
for passing through the breakers, which all of my companions preferred
to undertake in a lifeboat. This alternative was not open to me, as I
felt bound to accompany the groom and my horses; but nothing occurred,
except that in two successive heavy waves as we crossed the bar the
horses were knocked off their feet.
The General and his Staff were going to King William’s Town, 50 miles
distant, to which place there was a railway. I had no difficulty
about a horse I bought from a Dutchman at Cape Town, but a well-bred,
weight-carrying hunter named “War-Game,” standing 16.2, could not
be fitted in any horse box or truck available, and I handed it over
to a Kafir with orders to lead it up to “King,” the familiar local
abbreviation of the chief town of the eastern provinces. Later,
hearing of a larger truck up the line, I succeeded in getting the
horse safely to the Settlement, and it falsified all the predictions
of those who advised me that an English horse would be useless for
service in South Africa. “War-Game” was knee-haltered and turned loose
with the horses of my companions, although in the Transvaal, on account
of horse-sickness, I stabled him in wet weather wherever shelter was
available. The animal kept his condition, and was brought home at the
end of the Zulu War, carrying me well to hounds for many seasons.
He was very troublesome on board ship, for in the rough weather we
experienced near Madeira he got his foot over the front of the box,
which was on deck, and at another time had both hind feet over the side
of the ship at one moment.
The General relieved by Lieutenant-General the Honourable F. Thesiger
had reported that the war was over. This was accurate as regards the
outbreak in the Transkei. In that open country the Galekas in attacking
our fortified posts had been easily defeated, without inflicting any
loss on our people; but coincident with the General’s arrival at King
William’s Town, the Gaikas under Sandilli broke out in rebellion,
and moved westward towards the Buffalo Range, a lower feature of the
Amatola Mountains.
Sandilli, born in 1822, had fought against us in the wars of 1846,
1848, and in 1850–53, and commanded a devotion from his followers
which he did not deserve. He had, so far as I know, no redeeming
trait in his character. When he was twenty years of age, he assented
to his mother[140] being put to death by torture, by the advice of
witch doctors, a profession which might easily, and should have been
suppressed in 1857, when one of these pests persuaded the Kafirs on
the Kei River to destroy everything edible, with the result that
67,000 died of starvation. Sandilli was born with a withered foot, so
could not lead his men in action, who nevertheless, such is the tribal
spirit, would accept death to save him. In all the previous wars from
1835, in the time of General Sir Harry Smith, to that of General the
Honourable Sir George Cathcart, 1851–52, Sandilli had always managed to
evade capture.
One of his sons, Edmund, had been in a Government office, and his
apparent object in joining his father’s rash attempt to regain
Kafirland for the Natives was the fear of his younger brother,
Guonyama, a real Savage, being elected to the Headship of the Gaikas.
All through 1877 the witch doctors were urging the important chiefs
to rise; Sandilli hesitated until the Galekas under Kreli had been
defeated, and then it was an accidental beer-drinking quarrel between
Galekas and Fingoes which precipitated the outbreak.
The Fingoes, a remnant of eight tribes originally in the south-east
of Africa, flying from the Zulus, became slaves to the Galekas, and
their first cousins the Gaikas, to whom they acted as hewers of wood
and drawers of water, the Kafirs despising every sort of work, except
that of herding cattle, their fields being cultivated by the women. In
1835 the Fingoes were taken under British protection. They accepted
missionaries, and many were in 1877 more prosperous than their former
masters, having more wives and more cattle, and thus an antagonistic
feeling arose between the Gaikas and their former slaves.
When General Thesiger and his Staff reached King William’s Town on the
4th March, the farmers alarmed by Sandilli’s rebellion had crowded
into the towns, abandoning their farms even within one mile of the
Settlement. There were near Fort Beaufort, 45 miles to the west of
King William’s Town, two or three hundred Gaikas under Tini Macomo,
who however were not anxious to fight; but on the 9th March news was
brought in of Sandilli’s being near Grey Town, and of his men having
murdered three Europeans at Stutterheim, on the eastern edge of the
Buffalo Range. The position was curious; for while Sandilli’s men were
attacking a village, they sent their women to sit down near it, so as
to be out of danger.
When the news was received, I was dining at the Mess of the 24th
Regiment, and had asked to sit next to a man whose name was already
well known in the Colony, Captain Brabant, a Member of the Legislative
Council. He had served as Adjutant of the Cape Mounted Rifles, and when
the Corps was disbanded took to farming near King William’s Town, and
had been successful. He was a man of middle age, somewhat impetuous,
with great personal courage, an iron constitution, and for his age
very active habits; these qualities, combined with some Military
knowledge, marked him out as a Colonial leader of men. I found him
socially as a soldier an agreeable comrade.
The General told me next day he intended me to proceed to Keiskamma
Hoek, 25 miles to the north of King William’s Town, where I was to
endeavour to command harmoniously some Colonial farmers. There had been
considerable friction between Colonists and Imperial officers in the
Transkei Campaign. That afternoon Captain Brabant had a warning letter
written by a friend in Keiskamma Hoek, stating that Mr. Lonsdale, the
Magistrate, had been repulsed by Sandilli’s men, and that an attack
on the village was expected at daylight. Brabant urged me to start at
once, and I agreed to go after dinner, which would in any case bring us
in before daylight; but the General would not sanction it, as I was to
take out two companies of the 24th Regiment next day, leaving one about
half-way, at Bailie’s Grave.[141]
The Buffalo Range and its adjoining hills, over and above which our
operations were carried out for the next three months, is about 12
miles north of King William’s Town, which Settlement lies in a hollow
of a plateau bounded on either side by parallel ranges of mountains.
The track from King William’s Town to Keiskamma Hoek runs generally
for 12 miles in a north-westerly direction, passing over an undulating
country nearly bare of trees, when the traveller sees in front of and
above him a wall-like mountain, covered for miles with lofty trees and
dense underwood. The southern side is precipitous, and, under the term
“Perie Bush,” extends for 6 miles from the Buffalo River on the east
to the King William’s Town-Bailie’s Grave-Keiskamma Hoek road, on the
west. Bailie’s Grave post is a small square earthwork, 12 inches high,
a relic of the war of 1851, on a neck, which runs generally from east
to west, and connects this wall-like side of the Buffalo Range with
a mountain 2 miles south-west of Bailie’s Grave, called the Intaba
Indoda, to the west of which there is also a precipitous fall to the
southward, bounded by the Debe Flats. The track north of Bailie’s Grave
post, bending northwards, passes under, in succession, Goza Heights and
the Gwili-Gwili Mountains, which tower 2000 feet above Keiskamma Hoek,
the original “great place” of Sandilli’s father, well known in the war
of 1851–52. The scenery in the valley is beautiful beyond description.
The Basin, in which Germans had formed the most fertile farms I saw
in the Colony, is surrounded by fantastic hills. It possessed seven
churches,--each, it is true, only the size of an Aldershot hut,--six
being Lutheran, and one Church of England.[142]
The main feature in the Range is the so-called Buffalo Poort, at the
head of which the river rises in a ravine (locally called a kloof),
which extends 5 miles in a southerly direction, being at its mouth 2½
miles wide from east to west. At its head, where the spring rises,
the slopes are comparatively gentle, the gorge being about 50 feet
deep; but it falls away rapidly, and at the mouth of the valley a man
standing on the rocks above may throw a stone which, according to where
it alights, will travel 600 or 800 feet below him. All this valley
is clothed with magnificent forest trees, and most of it with thick
undergrowth, and is so rugged that within one pace there is often a
drop of 20 or 30 feet; and in one of our skirmishes two Gaikas being
pressed by us fell nearly 100 feet, and were killed.
To the eastward of the Poort, or valley, there is another hollow, the
stream of which joins the Buffalo River under a bold granite precipice,
called Sandilli’s Krantz, and again farther east a valley called the
Cwengwe forms the boundary of the tangled mass of forest-clad rocks
in which the Gaikas hid for three months. Sandilli’s Krantz covers
30 acres of rocks, formed by a portion of the cliff having broken
away, and unless one has lived in the cave it is nearly impossible to
find an individual in it, and throughout the war of 1851–52 it was
undiscovered by Europeans.
The whole Buffalo Range extends 12 miles from north to south, and 8
miles from east to west, the highest points being on the northern and
eastern sides. These are in themselves considerably above the edge of
the valley called the Buffalo Poort, and from the western side of the
Poort the ground slopes gradually, covered with bush, but interspersed
with open glades. In these glades the Gaikas fed their cattle and
basked, for the warm sun is as necessary to the red Kafir as is his
food.
When my party, one company of the 24th, Lieutenant Rawlings, and 10
mounted men of the 90th Light Infantry, reached Keiskamma Hoek, we
found the Magistrate, Mr. Rupert Lonsdale, preparing for another
reconnaissance. He was reticent as to the previous day’s proceedings,
in which he had lost two men, but I learned later that he had led in
the advance, and had covered the retreat. He had reconnoitred up on the
mountain, and was passing under one of its highest points, Mount Kempt,
with 60 White residents of Keiskamma Hoek, and about the same number of
Fingoes, when they were fired on by Kafirs in ambush, and had to retire.
For the next three months Lonsdale dined with me at least twice every
week, and had many other meals with me, and thus I got to know him very
well. He had served in the 74th Regiment, until insufficient means
forced him out of the Army, and he chanced to go to the Cape to nurse a
sick brother. He told me many amusing stories of his short Army life;
one instance, which occurred at Colchester Camp, I repeat.
Lonsdale was fond of playing cards, and one summer morning, when his
party broke up about 3 a.m., he saw, to his astonishment, an officer
of his acquaintance walking up and down between the huts, carrying a
lighted candle, and humming Handel’s “Dead March.” Startled, Lonsdale
said, “What are you doing here in your nightshirt?” “Don’t you know,”
the man replied, “I am dead, and they’re burying me? Just listen to the
band;” and he again started his mournful dirge. Lonsdale,[143] seeing
his state, humoured him for a few minutes, and taking his arm, they
walked up and down to this dismal music. Finally, when passing the door
of the man’s hut, which stood open, my friend said, “Here we are at
the cemetery,” and leading him into the hut, put him into bed. Then,
blowing out the candle, he said, “There you are, ‘dust to dust, ashes
to ashes,’” and covering him over with the bed-clothes, added, “We will
fire the three volleys in the morning.” Next day the man was ill, and
did not remain long in the Service.
Lonsdale was about thirty years of age, of slight but strong build,
and he strode along at the head of his Fingoes, setting a pace which
even they, who when paid will run 6 or 7 miles for hours in succession,
found severe. The Fingoes themselves were nearly always led by certain
men of character, not necessarily Heads of Locations who controlled
them in camp, but other men, who became self-constituted leaders in
action. These were Gaikas married into Fingoe families, and though
this fact was not in itself sufficient to render such men loyal, yet
if, as in some cases, their fathers were not “Out” in the 1851–52 war,
they had come to consider themselves Government men. Four were to my
knowledge shot leading their Fingoe fellow-villagers against the Gaikas.
About six months previously, Lonsdale had raised 250 Fingoes, and sent
them to the Transkei to serve under Mr. Frank Streatfield, a Kentish
gentleman, who at the time of Kreli’s rebellion had broken up an
ostrich farm in Albany, preparatory to his return to England. Offered
the command of Native levies, he cheerfully accepted the duty, and did
excellent work, living with me generally when we were on the Buffalo
Mountain. He was unknown to his men prior to the last six months, and
30 had not the great advantage of Lonsdale, who had known for two years
all the 900 Fingoes he raised in his District. The Magistrate is in the
mind of the Fingoe, or of the Kafir, of far more importance than the
Governor, or any General, inasmuch as the Magistrate not only rewards,
but he punishes. Thus Lonsdale had the unstinted devotion of his men,
actuated not only by respect, but by self-interest. They were absurdly
overpaid, receiving 2s. per diem and free rations, being able to live
on 2d. a day, and at a time when the British soldier got 1s.
[Illustration: SKETCH MAP to illustrate the GAIKA REBELLION]