MARCH ACROSS THE BASHEE TO THE UMTATA AND BACK TO THE
BASHEE—DEATH OF MAJOR WHITE—DIFFICULT MARCH FROM THE
BASHEE TO REJOIN SIR B. D’URBAN ON THE KEI—ANNEXATION OF
THE TERRITORY CALLED THE “PROVINCE OF QUEEN ADELAIDE,” AND
FOUNDING OF ITS CAPITAL, “KING WILLIAM’S TOWN”—RETURN OF THE
GOVERNOR TO GRAHAMSTOWN.
I collected my troops, and saw many of my officers look somewhat
staggered as to what was to come next, considering that they were such
a handful of troops in the heart of a country swarming with people
who were now our most avowed enemies. Some of Hintza’s followers were
in my hands. These I despatched to their countrymen, to tell them how
Hintza’s treachery had cost him his life, and that I should [not?] make
war upon them. I called the officers to the front, and some of the
influential non-commissioned officers of the Hottentot companies, and
told them the Bashee was not far distant. I should march upon it, and
cross or otherwise as circumstances demanded, for I had been informed
that the bed was full of cattle, principally colonial. I was now
without a guide, for on this important point I had naturally depended
on Hintza. However, I could distinguish the line of the bed of the
Bashee, to which it had been told me by Hintza that the cattle would be
driven, and the tracks of cattle all converged in that direction.
Late in the afternoon the waters of the Bashee were discernible and
on its further bank a considerable number of cattle. The troops had
been marching fourteen hours, but I resolved to push forward with my
cavalry, whom I ordered to lead their horses down the precipitous
banks of the river. I forded the beautiful and widely flowing stream
in an oblique direction, and ascended the rugged and steep banks of
the opposite side by a cleft in the rocks, which admitted of only one
horseman at a time. After gaining the heights, I immediately pushed
forward, and succeeded in capturing 3000 odd fine cattle, but very few
colonial ones among them, and had there been an hour’s more daylight,
I should have taken double the number. Night, however, came on, and I
bivouacked my party on the left bank of the Bashee, ground well adapted
for the security of the captured cattle. This was the third day since I
left the Kei, and the troops had marched 84 miles.
Having observed at dusk that the cattle I could not come up with were
driven in the direction of the Umtata, I resolved, as the moonlight
was greatly in my favour, to move at three o’clock in the morning [13
May], leaving the jaded horses, weakly men, and captured cattle, with
as large a guard as I could afford, in the bivouac. I gave this command
to Captain Ross, of the Cape Mounted Rifles, an old and experienced
Peninsular officer, with orders to concentrate everything as soon as
it was daylight. I told him that he might rely on it the Kafirs would
attempt to retake the cattle.
A most gallant officer and dear friend, Major White, the
Quartermaster-General to the Burgher force, had accompanied me, and had
rendered me great assistance, having also been busily employed each day
in adding to the topographical information so much required in this
country. He proposed to remain in camp to make sketches, and asked me
to give him a guard of one corporal and three men. I desired Captain
Ross to give him six, to keep a sharp look-out on this party, and (as I
anticipated what _did_ occur) to reinforce it in case of need. I also
particularly requested my friend White to go a very short way from
the bivouac, and to keep a sharp look-out, for he might rely upon the
enemy’s showing the utmost activity to retake the cattle and destroy
every man remaining behind.
Upon my return to camp, the first report was that Major White and
all his party were cut off. On the first alarm by a shot, the old
Peninsular officer Ross was broad awake, but his reinforcement only
arrived in time to find the body of poor White lying pierced with
wounds, and all his papers, double-barrelled gun, etc., borne off,
and the party lying murdered near him. In him the Colony lost a man
of superior ability and vast utility, a noble-minded public-spirited
fellow, formerly a lieutenant in our service, and I a friend I was
proud of.
During these disasters in camp, which my foresight had anticipated, I
pushed forward, detaching Captain Bailie with sixty excellent men of
the Hottentot battalion down the Bashee to a distance, then to bring up
his right shoulder and rejoin me on the banks of the Kakke[107] River,
equidistant between the Bashee and Umtata, where I proposed to halt and
cook, if circumstances permitted me. I had no guide, and my movements
were conducted by reference to a very defective map. I marched from the
mountainous bank of the Bashee through a most beautiful and fertile
country, strongly undulating and rich in pasturage, over which was
visible the track of vast numbers of cattle. I pushed on with vigour
until the bed of the Umtata was perfectly visible, but not a head of
cattle was discernible. The whole country had been driven on the alarm
and capture of the previous night. The enemy had assembled in vast
numbers all around me, but I never could get near him, so wary and so
vigilant was he. I succeeded, however, in taking one prisoner, and
two Fingoes came in to me. From them I learned what I indeed saw—the
cattle of the whole country had been driven, previously and by Hintza’s
orders, over the Umtata, those I had captured the night before being,
as it were, the rear-guard.
From the distance marched, the fatigue of the troops, and the powerful
concentration of the immense population all around me, I naturally
began to turn my attention to the security of the bivouac I had left
behind and the captured cattle. I had previously directed Captain
Bailie not to join me, if he found the country I had detached him
into excessively difficult to traverse. He was in that case to follow
the bed of the Bashee a reasonable distance, and then return straight
to the bivouac. My own observation of the country I had marched over
confirmed me in thinking it would be impossible for him to join me. I
therefore made no halt on account of any such expectation.
The enemy on my march back made some attempts on my rear. The officer,
a Lieutenant Bailie, son of the man previously mentioned, a very sharp
fellow, laid himself in ambush in the long grass and several times made
the Kafirs pay dearly for their temerity.
On approaching my bivouac I saw all was secure, and did not anticipate
the extent of the melancholy report I was to receive of the loss of my
friend White, as before described. Captain Ross told me that he had
been kept on the most vigilant alert all day; that every moment he
expected a rush from the immense numbers of Kafirs all round him, and
he was very glad to see me back.
Every moment the numbers increased around me, and their daring to
approach me indicated great confidence. I was perfectly satisfied that
an attempt would be made at night to retake the cattle, and I made my
defensive dispositions accordingly, giving the command of the picquet
to an active officer on whom I could depend—Captain Lacy of the 72nd
Regiment.
Scarcely was it perfectly dark when on came, in the most stealthy
manner, a swarm of Kafirs. Their design was anticipated, however, by
our vigilance, and the assailants were driven back with great loss.
Captain Bailie had not yet returned with his sixty men, and I was very
anxious he should do so, although I felt no great apprehensions for his
safety, as I heard no firing in his direction, and I was well aware he
would not give in without a desperate struggle. However, between eleven
and twelve at night I heard him approaching—joyfully, I admit; for he
and his men had been marching from three o’clock in the morning, and
taking into consideration the previous day’s march, I then considered,
and I now maintain, that these sixty men marched a greater distance
than was ever traversed in the same number of hours by any infantry
in the world. I was aware that unless they fell in with cattle they
would have nothing to eat, and I had their dinners prepared; the active
fellows had eaten nothing from the previous night. Captain Bailie
reported to me that he had had various rencontres with parties of
the enemy; that after dark he was closely invested, and several bold
attempts were made to assagai his men in the very ranks.
Seeing the number of the enemy, their increasing hostility and daring,
the difficulty of the road I had to retire by, being obliged to recross
the Bashee by a path admitting of only one bullock at a time, it became
necessary to make my arrangements with every skill and attention, lest
the enemy should retake my capture, the abandonment of which would be
contrary to the feelings of most of my party. Accordingly I made the
soldiers cook at daylight, and went in among my doubtful troops—the
new levies; for in my _soldiers_ of the 72nd Regiment I had every
confidence, as they deserved. I found my Hottentots, who are very
sharp fellows, perfectly aware of the delicacy of our position, which,
indeed, I did not attempt to conceal, as I wished to impress upon them
that our safety and the getting away of the cattle depended on their
silence and obedience and their never firing a shot without orders.
They always called me “father.” An old spokesman now said to me in
Dutch, “We will do all our father desires, if he will stay near us, and
not go galloping about to have his throat cut; for if we lose him we
are all lost.”
I sent Captain Ross over the river to establish himself on the opposite
bank, and I placed parties in the river above and below the ford to
keep the Kafirs from driving off the cattle, as they are very expert
at this, and a few men could have effected it if once an opening had
occurred.
So soon as the enemy saw me under arms and observed my retrograde
movement, they disposed of themselves in the most dexterous manner,
so as to attack me wherever able, and made frequent feints in one
direction so as to attack in another. But so well were my orders
obeyed, and so alert was every officer and soldier, fully aware that
one error would occasion dire disaster, all these bold attempts were
defeated: and I succeeded in crossing the river to the full extent of
my most sanguine hopes. When I reached the open country about four
miles from the river, the enemy had no cover or ground favourable for
molesting me, and I pursued my march uninterrupted, but with great
caution and in as compact a body as possible. Three thousand cattle
cover a deal of ground, and but for the ability of the Hottentots as
drovers I should never have succeeded in bringing them off.
In all my previous service I was never placed in a position requiring
more cool determination and skill, and as one viewed the handful of
my people compared with the thousands of brawny savages all round us,
screeching their war-cry, calling to their cattle, and indicating by
gesticulations the pleasure they would have in cutting our throats, the
scene was animating to a degree. I continued my march and recrossed the
Kei on the 17th May, and rejoined the main body under his Excellency
Sir B. D’Urban, having completed a march of 218 miles in seven days
and a half, over a rugged and mountainous country, intersected by deep
rivers at the bottom of precipitous ravines and rivulets difficult to
cross, having had to march for hours without any road at all, bringing
with me 3000 captured cattle and 1000 Fingoes, who had flocked to
me with their families for protection, and added considerably to my
difficulties; and all this effected without the loss of an individual
except those whose fatuity, or rather indiscretion, had placed them—so
contrary to my caution and my anticipation of danger—within the grasp
and power of the undaunted and stealthy savage.
On my reaching Sir Benjamin D’Urban, he gave out—
“21 May, 1835.
“The Commander-in-Chief has again the gratification of recording the
military skill and indefatigable activity of Colonel Smith, and the
admirable discipline, zeal, and determined spirit of the troops under
his orders in the recent expedition beyond the mouth of the Bashee.
Upon no former occasion—and there have been many during this campaign
where they have well earned praise for their high qualities—have they
displayed them in a more eminent degree. They marched in seven days
218 miles; overcame all opposition, notwithstanding that this was
obstinately attempted by several thousands of armed and determined
savages; crossed and recrossed a large river of very difficult banks,
and brought off from the further side three thousand head of cattle
which had been plundered from the Colony. They have also achieved a
still more important service in the course of this bold and rapid
inroad: they have rescued from destruction and safely brought in one
thousand of the Fingo race, who from their remote situation had been
before unable to join their countrymen now under British protection,
and who would inevitably have been sacrificed to the fury of the
savages so soon as they should have had leisure to think of them.
“For these services, effected too without loss from the ranks, the
Commander-in-Chief returns his thanks to all the troops employed,
officers and soldiers, and he especially offers them to Colonel Smith.”
The Governor was much depressed at the unfortunate loss of the chief
Hintza by his own treachery, not only from the natural feeling of
humanity towards the individual, but because he fully anticipated the
hold the canting party would take of it in England. Such men, stripping
facts of all collateral circumstances, so changed the features of that
incident as to twist it into the tortuous shape of their own cunning
duplicity. For my own part, I was firmly based in my conscientious
rectitude, of which Almighty God alone was Witness and Judge, and
anything which man could say I disregarded. I admit, however, that at
the moment I did not expect to be called a bloodthirsty murderer in
every print in every quarter of our dominions, or to be shamefully
abandoned by the Minister of the Colonies,[108] whose duty it was in
such assaults honestly to have supported and sustained me against the
misled voice of the public, and not to have sacrificed me at the shrine
of cringing party spirit when I had so faithfully, so zealously, and
so energetically saved for him the Colony of the Cape. He remained
in office long enough to repent and acknowledge his error. My own
rectitude of conscience prevented me ever caring an iota for these
miscreants’ assaults, and I was ultimately thanked by the minister;
although not till I had undergone the ordeal of inquiry by a court of
investigation, levelled at _me_, but assembled on Mr. Southey, by whose
hand the chief lost his life (August and Sept., 1836).
The Governor prepared to move into the colony, as soon as he had taken
possession of the country on the right bank of the Kei, some years
previously wrested from the Hottentots by the Kafirs, and as soon as
he had founded the city of King William’s Town [24 May] immediately
on the left bank of the Buffalo, and established corresponding posts
throughout the newly added “Province of Queen Adelaide.”
The army marched from its position on the Kei, establishing posts on
the line of road towards Grahamstown, and headquarters were established
on the 22nd May, on the site of the new city, King William’s Town, and
remained there till the 11th June, when the Commander-in-Chief returned
to Grahamstown.
During this period, with a small force of cavalry and infantry, I made
some most rapid and extensive marches throughout the whole of the new
province, the object being, in virtue of the proclamation, to compel
the Kafirs to return behind the Kei in the spirit of that conquest by
which they had some years previously crossed it. A more harassing duty
for myself and troops cannot be imagined, although the troops had the
best of the fatigue, for after each excursion I took fresh parties.
The day previously to headquarters returning to Grahamstown a General
Order was published, of which the following is an extract:—
“The Commander-in-Chief publishes three reports made to him on the
1st, 3rd, and 7th inst. [June, 1835] by Colonel Smith _at length_,
because they are full of valuable instruction for young officers
(whose attention, therefore, is earnestly invited to them), setting
forth in the clearest and most emphatic manner how such duties
should be performed, as well with regard to arrangement of plan, as
to activity and energy of execution; and, above all, they furnish a
practical illustration of this great military principle, which should
be foremost in the mind of every soldier, and which so strikingly
characterizes this distinguished officer, ‘Nil actum reputans, siquid
superesset agendum.’”
After thanking the troops, the Order continues—
“It diminishes the regret of the Commander-in-Chief at quitting this
personal command, that he leaves them in charge of Colonel Smith, an
officer in whom they must all have the fullest confidence as well on
account of those high military qualities which they have witnessed,
and which have made him a main cause of the recent successes, as
because they know from experience he is a soldier, and will always
have a watchful care of all that can contribute to their health,
comfort, and convenience.
“Colonel Smith, C.B., is appointed to the command of the District of
the Province of Queen Adelaide and all the troops therein, until his
Majesty’s pleasure be known.”