KAFFIR KNOWLEDGE OF SURGERY--MANNERS MORE ARTIFICIAL THAN
NATURAL--PEACE CONCLUDED WITH SANDILLI AND MACOMO--INDIFFERENT
CHARACTER OF THE TREATY OF PEACE--THE CORPS DISBANDED--THANKS
OF COMMANDER-IN-CHIEF--RETURN TOWARDS THE CAPE--ADDRESSES FROM
THE INHABITANTS OF FORT BEAUFORT AND GRAHAM’S TOWN--ENGINEERING
TASTES--SAM ROWE--THE MARY JANE--I EMBARK FOR CAPE TOWN.
Kaffir witchcraft assumes so many fantastic forms, that it is difficult
to give a notion as to any guiding principle in it. Hatred of the
European seems to play a large part in all their superstitions.
A piece of stick is supposed, after blessing and incantations, to
become a talisman, having the power to save the wearer from all danger
the white man can attempt to inflict against him; but it is thought
to be powerless in warding off a danger coming from a neighbouring
tribe. They believe that we are born of the foam of the sea, and we
should all perish if driven back to our ships, which they suppose to
be the cradles in which we are brought up. Like almost all magicians,
they believe they can raise plagues of all sorts, and inflict sores and
different forms of leprosy by merely casting an evil eye upon any one.
Their knowledge of medicine and surgery is greater than may be
supposed. I have known them cure headaches and neuralgia, hitherto
incurable, by putting a leather band round the head, and adding
underneath small smooth pebbles at certain distances, then placing a
weight upon the head, which is usually a bowl of supposed mesmerised
water, weighing down the whole until the head becomes completely
numbed, and all pain ceases.
Two or three applications of this nature I know to be, from actual
observation, a positive cure. They also know the use of several
medicines, such as emetics, &c.; and in surgery will stop the bleeding
of an artery as well as any surgeon--applying wet bandages wrapped
round smooth stones, which act as efficiently as a tourniquet. They
will also amputate the small joints with great skill.
The Kaffir customs are far more artificial than one would suppose from
his ease of manner; every position of the body has been taught him
from his childhood. Whenever Kaffir men or women present themselves
before you, it is in the attitude they have been instructed as the
most becoming for the furtherance of their wishes. A man who comes
to ask for a favour which concerns the welfare of any member of his
family, takes quite a different attitude than when offering to exchange
something in barter. The young man who seeks to purchase the hand of
his wife, has certain modes of well-defined expression in the attitude
he assumes, whether hesitating or assured of success. The triumphal
swagger of a suitor who has been successful in such a mission is
something marvellous to behold--it really seems as if he thought the
earth would soil his feet as he treads upon it. On the other hand, if
he has been refused, and has no hopes of making a second more enticing
offer, he will retire in such hang-dog fashion as to make his worst
enemy inclined to pity him. The man who stands before you leaning
gracefully upon his assegai, in a posture that even a sculptor might
dream of as the embodiment of manhood and grace, is not what you might
suppose in a position taught by nature’s school, but the summing up of
what generations have thought to be the beau-ideal of a man.
Johnny Fingo once presented himself before me in so calm and dignified
a manner that he quite surprised me; and upon my asking him the nature
of the business he came upon, he replied that he was the bearer of a
communication from Sandilli. No Roman presenting himself on the part of
the senate, bringing an offer of peace or war to a foreign potentate,
could have done so with more calm assurance of the mighty import of his
mission.
The women are small in shape and frame compared with the men, and
extremely beautiful, as far as the moulding of the limbs is concerned;
but their features will not bear the same close inspection. Winsome,
coy, and to a certain degree striking when young, they become snappish,
coarse, and ungainly as they advance in years. Noziah, of whom mention
has already been made, was far handsomer than the ordinary women of
her tribe (Timbuctoo), and betrayed her birth by her stately carriage
and the extreme delicacy of her hands and feet. Her mental capacity
was equal to that of any untutored woman I ever came in contact with;
she understood thoroughly the intricate policy then being carried out
at the Cape, the position of the Dutch and English settlers, and the
use the Kaffirs might make of these two antagonistic interests for
their own profit. She also was well aware of the task the missionary
was performing, the progress of English civilisation, and the good and
evil that it was then bringing into the land. In short, she was a woman
capable of undertaking any noble task which Providence in its wisdom
might have thought necessary.
General Cathcart now returned from his Basutoland expedition. Macomo
and Sandilli had made peace with the British authorities upon terms
that neither they nor the colonists could then or afterwards exactly
make out. All that seemed perfectly clear was, that when the English
Government had made up its mind as to the delimitations of territory,
&c., that decision would be duly signified to all interested; and let
the terms be as onerous or as arbitrary, as stupid or as wise, as the
authorities at home could devise, they had to be accepted.
My corps having no further _raison d’être_ was disbanded, and a most
flattering general order issued, in which the Commander-in-chief stated
the following:--
“HEADQUARTERS, GRAHAM’S TOWN,
_22d March 1853_.
“The Commander-in-chief, in disbanding this corps,--the
Water-kloof Rangers,--wishes to convey to its gallant
commander, officers, and men, the high estimation in which he
holds their services, &c.
(Signed) “A. J. CLOËTE,
_Quartermaster-General_.”
On my return towards England I was most kindly greeted at Fort Beaufort
with an address, presented to me by the principal inhabitants of the
town.
At Graham’s Town a similar address was presented to me by Messrs
Godlington and Cocks, members of the Legislative Council, and signed
by the principal inhabitants of the town and the district around.
I afterwards went with these gentlemen to the sea-coast to find out
whether or not a safe roadstead for shipping could be established
somewhat nearer the town than Port Elizabeth. Being somewhat of a
military engineer, this proved an agreeable task; and I was already
actively engaged in drawing out plans when the news arrived of the
death of a very near relative. This closed all prospect of banquets and
receptions, or proposals for new harbours; and I must confess that it
was some slight consolation to think that I should not have to present
myself at the head of a dinner-table as the honoured guest, to reply to
vapid compliments.
At Port Elizabeth another equally gratifying address was presented
to me, and what rendered it more pleasing was the fact of its being
offered by Mr Deare, Mr Wylde, and other gentlemen, who had so kindly
foretold my success as I passed through their town on my way to the
front. I stayed a few days at Port Elizabeth, and one morning I walked
with some merchants and others on its surf-beaten shore to see how a
jetty could be made to facilitate landing (they had heard of my plans
concerning another place), for I always had a mania for building that
follows like my shadow wherever I go.
I seldom see a spot but I always, in imagination at least, commence
building upon it,--not that I care a whit whether it is for myself or
another; yet more than one giant is living in the House that Jack built.
Wherever I have passed, a road, a bridge, a chapel,--a something,
has marked my passage. I once built a jetty in the Bay of Bourgas,
betwixt Varna and Constantinople, 147 yards long, 8 yards wide, having
22 feet of water; and on it embarked 45,000 troops, 9400 horses, 140
field-guns, with ample stores, for the Crimea; and the jetty (which is
still standing), and the embarkation above mentioned, all was completed
in twelve weeks. It is true I was helped by a British officer,
Commodore Eardley Wilmot, of her Majesty’s steamer Sphinx, but neither
of us got (nor in fact wanted) anything for our pains. The pleasure of
the work was sufficient payment. I merely mention these things that the
reader may know that I am not a mere amateur soldier, but one who has
had a practical knowledge of his work.
As I said above, I was walking on the sea-shore when I was accosted by
a good-looking sailor with “Sir, I am a fellow-countryman of yours, and
a west-countryman to boot. I should like to shake hands; my name is Sam
Rowe, and I hail from Penzance.”
I expressed the pleasure, which I really felt, on making his
acquaintance. After this he joined us as we proceeded in our
examination of the beach. When this was over, while we were returning
to the town, Mr Sam Rowe said he wanted a minute’s private talk with
me. Stepping aside for that purpose, he informed me that he would be
happy to take me to Cape Town if I would go in that nice little craft,
pointing to a cutter in the bay. He had heard from the town-folks
that I was going there, and he thought I should like to sail with
him. The vessel was his, and his time too. It was impossible to reply
to Mr Rowe’s eager offer by refusal, so with a shake of the hand it
was arranged there and then. The conditions were that the vessel was
to be mine during the trip; he and his crew, consisting of three
men and a boy (his son) were to be at my orders. Of stores there
were plenty--fish, poultry, and salted pork, captains’ biscuits from
Plymouth, bloaters direct from Yarmouth, and real rum from Jamaica. As
for the craft herself--named Mary Jane, after his little daughter at
home--why, nothing afloat, from a St Michael oranger to a fifty-gun
frigate, could stand with her in a gale or a breeze. All these things
Captain Sam Rowe offered me, and in exchange only required the company
of my humble self, and yarns from the seat of war.
Two days afterwards I embarked in the Mary Jane, and found her to be a
smack of forty tons. A long time ago she had been a trawler, but was
now employed in the more important service of a Government transport.
Captain Rowe I have already partly described. I will only add that he
was dark-haired, fair-skinned, grey-eyed, about 5 feet 8 inches in
height, broad-shouldered, with well-rounded limbs, daring to folly (but
his folly had a method in it); and his sheet-anchor a Bible, and a
stout-hearted Devonshire matron at home.
He had been in his youth first mate of an Indiaman, afterwards captain
of a fruiterer, and now he was the commander of what had once been his
father’s craft, then called the Sea-gull, but now rebaptised the Mary
Jane. At home he had not found trawling a very profitable business, so
with three other west-countrymen he had started with his little craft
to barter with the natives on the West African coast.
How he got there was rather surprising. His only chronometer was his
father’s old watch. He took no observations, but merely guessed at
his position from the distance run and the log. Occasionally he took
soundings--_i. e._, when he could find them; chart he had none. Small
success had, however, attended his bold efforts, although he had
several very grand “specs” on hand. In the hold were a lot of real
Birmingham guns, bought at 7s. 6d. apiece, which had but one fault,
that of sometimes sending off their contents at the wrong end, hitting
the shooter instead of the object shot at. There were also scores of
magnificent crowns for African kings, made up of tinsel paper, brass
spikes, wax pearls, and glass diamonds. He had even once, he said,
furnished a mighty Ashantee potentate with a throne. This, however,
he seemed to regret, it having been an old family piece of furniture.
Strange as this may seem, I believed it to be quite true, as the throne
in question was merely an old arm-chair, the legs, arms, and back of
which had been severely shaken and cracked by many a toss and tumble in
the cabin of the Mary Jane.
On my expressing surprise at his placing so shaky a seat for the
support of a king, he with a sharp twinkle of the eye replied, “That
is the look-out of the occupant; and,” added he, “these old-fashioned
articles, if spliced at the proper time and place, still last for some
good length of time.” Sam, like myself, was a stanch Conservative,
and preferred to patch his coat all over to turning it. Not that he
preferred an old coat to a new one, but he liked the old constitutional
cut.
Notwithstanding all his grand undertakings, Captain Sam had not
succeeded as he wished, and he thought that he had been humbugging and
humbugged enough. After struggling for two long years through fevers
on land and heavy surf-breakers on the shore, he had finally reached
Cape Town, from whence he was now engaged in carrying Government stores
along the coast as far as Natal.
These and many similar yarns were spun in the cabin of Sam’s little
craft, in which I was now cooped up, in an atmosphere which I found
fearfully clammy and stuffy after inhaling _le grand air_ for two
years on African uplands. Sam, however, did all he could to cheer the
comfortless surroundings of his small cribbed cabin by the ever-varying
novelty of his yarns. He related many a hard-fought fight with the
storms of old ocean, to which, in spite of all, he still clung, and
with which he still hoped to have many a tussle ere he was piped to
settle his own long account.
When wearying sometimes with his tales, and the sound of the surges
striking the thin wooden sides of the trembling Mary Jane, I would go
upon deck, and there watch the long rolling waves that sweep round the
Cape, or listen to the cheery voice of his sailor-boy, as he sang many
a ditty of Cornish and Devon heroes, and the glorious deeds of Drake on
the Spanish main.
In this way we furrowed our way along, making very wet weather round
the coast, until we came to the spot where the Birkenhead had gone down
so recently with all hands. Here we luffed up for a time, and, baring
our brows to the breeze, offered a parting salute to the gallant crew
and stout-hearted red-jackets who had here gone to their last account
at duty’s call; then, sheering off once more, filled our sails to a
half gale of wind, and bounded off like a startled sea-gull towards
Table Bay.
After this fashion we sped on through the sea, throwing up ridges high
above our decks, and on the 12th July rounded the Lion’s Mountain.
Here becalmed for a time we stayed our course, when a heavy puff from
the crest of that huge emblem of African life sent such a staggering
pressure on our outspread canvas as nearly brought us to grief. With
a sudden whirl we were on our beam-ends! My berth on board had never
been very dry, but now I rolled into one still more watery in the
lee-scuppers. By good luck the tackling gave way, the topsails went
overboard, and the stout craft righted again, as Captain Sam expressed
it, none the worse for a little deck-swabbing. I managed also to
regain my place on board, none the worse for my startling bath.
The next morning I declined to land in Captain Sam’s little punt, much
to his annoyance, as he volunteered himself to pull me ashore. I,
however, gave him to understand that it was beneath the dignity of two
such west-country commanders as we were to land in such a tub-looking
receptacle. The fact is, after Sam had placed his own burly person in
the centre of his boat, I saw no place except his own brawny shoulders
on which I could perch.