Sir Frederick Carrington takes over the command of all forces
in Matabeleland—Account of Colonel Plumer'a successful
engagement—General Carrington sends out three patrols to clear
the country of rebels to the west, north, and north-east—No
enemy met with, but much grain taken and destroyed—A large impi
reported camped on the Umguza—Force under Colonel Spreckley
proceeds to attack it—Kafirs charged by mounted men and
bolt—Heavy Matabele losses—How this impi was deceived by a
witch-doctor—Incorrect statements in _Truth_.
Shortly after the return of Colonel Napier's column from the Insiza
district, Major-General Sir Frederick Carrington reached Bulawayo with
his very able and carefully-chosen staff, and at once took over the
command of all the forces in Matabeleland. And here I ought perhaps to
close my narrative, which I only intend to be a history of the efforts
made by the colonists themselves to suppress the native insurrection,
before the arrival in Matabeleland of the relief forces sent up to
their assistance. However, at the risk of wearying my readers, I will
ask them to have patience yet a little longer until I bring my story
up to the date of the disbandment of the Bulawayo Field Force. Some
time before the return of Colonel Napier's column, the force raised by
Colonel Plumer (of the York and Lancaster Regiment) for the relief of
the colonists in Matabeleland had reached Bulawayo, and had already had
a successful engagement with the rebels, whom he had dislodged from
the positions they had taken up on the Umguza, some twelve miles from
Bulawayo, to which they had retired after having been driven from the
immediate vicinity of the town by the sortie under Captain Macfarlane
on 25th April.
As a detachment of the Bulawayo Field Force and some of Colenbrander's
colonial natives took part in this expedition, I will, before
proceeding further, give a short account of what took place. Acting
under instructions from headquarters, Captain Knapp of the Bulawayo
Field Force left Bulawayo at 10 P.M. on the night of 24th May in
command of a detachment of forty men of Gifford's Horse, with orders
to report himself to Major Watts at Government House. On his arrival
there the latter officer was found to be in readiness to move with the
men under his command, and at about 11.30 P.M. the whole force marched
in a north-westerly direction, holding a course across country between
the Umguza and Khami rivers, whilst at the same time Colonel Plumer
moved out of Bulawayo with another column, taking a line parallel to
the course followed by Major Watts. During this night march Captain
Knapp was in command of the advance, himself leading the one detachment
of Gifford's Horse on the right front of the column, whilst Lieutenant
Warwick led the other half on the left. Colenbrander's boys under
Lieutenant Mullins were placed in the centre of the advanced line.
At about 2.30 A.M. Captain Knapp came suddenly in contact with the
enemy's outposts, who immediately opened fire on his party in the
darkness. Captain Knapp at once dismounted his men and kept the rebels
from charging by pouring volleys into the thickets where they were
concealed. He was soon joined by Lieutenant Warwick and the Colonial
Boys under Lieutenant Mullins, but it was not until Major Watts had
come up with the main body and the Maxim had been brought into action
that the enemy's fire was completely silenced.
When the firing commenced, Colonel Plumer and his men were not very far
off on the left flank, and their course was at once directed towards
the spot where the engagement appeared to be proceeding. Thus the
two columns joined forces soon after the enemy had retired, when a
square was formed, and a good watch kept during the remaining hours of
darkness. However, no further attack was made.
During the first attack, Mr. Hamilton, who was acting as galloper to
Captain Knapp, was shot through both legs, whilst one of the Colonial
Boys was badly wounded and several horses killed.
At daylight the following morning Captain Knapp and Captain Coope
were sent out to look for the enemy, and the latter officer coming
across a small party of them, he at once attacked with the force under
his command, consisting of twenty white men and some of Radikladi's
Bamangwato natives, and drove the rebels back on their main body, which
was found to be in a strong position amongst some thickly-wooded ridges
about two miles to the west of Colonel Plumer's camp.
At about half-past seven or eight o'clock the whole column was moved
forwards to attack them, Captain Coope's Scouts being in advance on
the right, whilst Captain Knapp with the troopers of Gifford's Horse
occupied a similar position on the left. These two officers, after
galloping to the foot of the first ridge occupied by the rebels, there
dismounted their men, and then in the face of a heavy fire, led them on
foot most gallantly against the hidden enemy, whom they succeeded in
driving from their most advanced position.
In this attack two of Captain Knapp's men were severely wounded,
Sergeant Peacock being shot in the stomach, whilst Trooper Slowey had
his right leg so badly shattered that amputation of the limb was found
necessary.
The enemy's first line of defence having been taken in this brilliant
manner by the advance guard, the whole column under Colonel Plumer then
came into action, and the rebels were driven from three densely-wooded
ridges successively into the open valley of the Umguza, and were then
pursued for a distance of three miles. When the pursuit was over, the
horses were off-saddled on the bank of the Umguza and allowed to rest
until 2 P.M., at which hour a start was made for Mr. Crewe's farm of
Redbank on the Khami river, some sixteen miles from Bulawayo, where it
was believed that a large impi was camped in a very strong position.
Captain Knapp now took charge of the right-hand section of the advance
guard, and Captain Coope with his Scouts was placed on the left.
After having proceeded for about two hours, the latter officer sent
a messenger to Captain Knapp to inform him that the enemy were in
force on his left. They then joined forces and attacked the Kafirs,
who were in a strong position on a wooded hill, to reach which two
deep gullies had to be crossed under a very heavy fire. Here one of
Coope's Scouts was shot dead (Trooper Hays), whilst Mr. Gordon Forbes,
who had accompanied the expedition as a volunteer, had a very narrow
escape. He had crossed a dry gully with four of Captain Coope's Scouts,
when Kafirs showed themselves on either side at a distance of only
thirty yards and fired on the white men. Mr. Gordon Forbes' horse was
shot in two places, and, falling with him, pinned him to the ground,
the men who were with him retreating under the heavy fire, and had
not some more of Coope's Scouts come up and pulled him out he would
undoubtedly have been killed. At this time, too, one of Radikladi's
boys was wounded in the face and another horse killed. The main column
then coming up, the enemy were driven from their position and pursued
through the bush till dusk, Colonel Plumer taking up his quarters for
the night in the camp on the top of the hill from which the rebels had
been driven.
On the following day scouts were sent out to endeavour to discover
the position of the enemy, but no trace of them could be found, so,
as the horses were very much knocked up, a return to Bulawayo was
decided upon. During these skirmishes Captain Knapp lost five horses,
in addition to the two men of his troop who were badly wounded, whilst
Captain Coope also had several horses killed. These two officers and
their men, being always in advance of the main column, naturally
got the lion's share of the fighting. They were both thanked for
the gallant way in which they had led their men by their commanding
officer, Colonel Plumer, who also complimented Mr. Maurice Gifford on
the excellent service rendered by the troop of horse which bore his
name.
During the first week in June, General Carrington determined to send
out three patrols simultaneously with the object of thoroughly clearing
the country of rebels to the west, north, and north-east of Bulawayo,
before making an attack with the combined forces on the impis of
Babian, Umlugulu, and Sikombo, who, it was known, had taken up strong
positions in the Matopo Hills, from which they could only be driven
with great difficulty and at the expense of a heavy loss of life on the
side of the attacking party. Thus, towards the end of the week Colonel
Plumer proceeded with a force of some 600 men to the Khami river, the
course of which stream it was his intention to follow to its junction
with the Gwai, whilst on Friday, 5th June, Captain Macfarlane got off
with 300 mounted white men and 100 Colonial Boys for the Umguza,
which he was determined to thoroughly clear of rebels along its whole
course. Mr. Cecil Rhodes, Sir Charles Metcalfe, and Mr. Weston Jarvis
accompanied the latter force.
Both these patrols were unsuccessful in coming up with any large body
of the rebels, who dispersed and fled as the white men advanced. Thus,
although some kraals were burnt and a good deal of grain taken and
destroyed, no decisive engagement took place, and no heavy blow could
be dealt at the ever-vanishing foe. Colonel Plumer's column got back
to their quarters on the Khami river on Wednesday, 24th June, whilst
Captain Macfarlane's men did not return to Bulawayo until Friday, 3rd
July.
Before these patrols left, Colonel Beal, who it may be remembered
had parted company with Colonel Napier at the Insiza river, reached
Bulawayo and formed a laager about two miles out of town to the right
of the main road to Salisbury. It had been arranged that on the morning
after Captain Macfarlane got away with his men to the lower Umguza,
another patrol was to leave town under the command of Colonel Spreckley
for the purpose of establishing forts at Shiloh and Inyati, and to this
patrol I had been attached with a few of my men, the majority of my
troop being stationed at Fort Marquand.
Every preparation had been made for an early start on the Saturday
morning, when late on Friday evening a report came in that there was
a large impi camped on the Umguza, at the ford on the main road to
Salisbury. It appeared that Sir Charles Metcalfe and the American Scout
Burnham, who had been riding out to Colonel Beal's camp, having missed
their way in the dark, had ridden down the main road to the Umguza,
and had there seen a line of camp-fires, extending over half a mile of
ground, along the wooded ridge beyond the river, which could betoken
nothing else but that a Matabele impi had taken up its position there.
This news that a large impi was within six miles of the town having
been confirmed by scouts sent out later on during the Friday night,
Colonel Spreckley received orders to make an attack upon it on the
following morning with all the mounted men he could muster in town,
supplemented by the contingent under Colonel Beal. By nine o'clock a
force of some 200 mounted men with three guns was ready, and forthwith
set out for the Umguza. This force was composed of the Scouts under
Captain Grey, a large contingent of Africanders under Captain Van
Niekerk, thirty men under Captain Brand, and fifteen of my own troop
which was all for which horses could be found.
On reaching the rising ground about a mile on this side of the Umguza,
we found the Salisbury men drawn up all ready waiting for us, and they
informed us that they had been watching the Matabele for some time
past, and had seen them leave the camps in which they had slept in a
very leisurely way and take up their positions in the open bush behind,
where they were waiting for us.
They had not to wait long. The Africanders under Captain Van Niekerk
were ordered to cross the river about half a mile below the ford, which
they did at the same time that the remainder of Colonel Spreckley's
force and the mounted men of the Salisbury contingent crossed by the
main road, the latter then deploying to the left.
At this time we were hidden from the Kafirs by the slope of rising
ground behind which they had retreated, but when this was crested they
were seen in the bush little more than a hundred yards in front of the
foremost horsemen. The order was at once given to charge, on which a
whirlwind of horsemen bore down on them, Grey's Scouts and Brand's men
being in the centre, the Africanders on the left, and the Salisbury men
on the right.
On this occasion the Kafirs must have been quite 1000 strong, spread
out in skirmishing order through the open bush in face of the long line
of advancing horsemen, yet they never stood for a moment, but were
seized with a panic just as the smaller number of their compatriots
had been when charged at Thaba Induna, as I have already related. In
the same way as these latter, they fired a hurried ill-aimed volley
and then turned and ran. In the chase which followed, a large number
of them were shot down, and the pursuit was only abandoned when the
fleetest-footed amongst them had gained the shelter of the belt of
thick bush which runs down from the western side of Thaba Induna
towards the Umguza.
I am of opinion myself that the Matabele lost more heavily on this
occasion than at any other fight during the campaign, for the very
reason that it was not a fight but only a pursuit in which the natives
were killed as fast as they were overtaken. Just as on the day at
Thaba Induna, so on this occasion the panic-stricken savages accepted
death when the horsemen came up with them without making any attempt
at resistance, except in a few instances. One man turned on Trooper
Davey of Grey's Scouts and shot him through the thigh with an old
musket at close quarters, the large bullet smashing the thigh-bone and
necessitating the amputation of the limb; whilst another, leaping out
of a bush, rushed on to Trooper Hamilton of the Salisbury contingent
and stabbed him in the right side, the assegai entering his liver.
Hamilton wrenched the assegai out of his assailant's hand and then shot
him. My old friend, Mr. F. C. Farley of Grey's Scouts and a well-known
figure in the Bulawayo of to-day, as he was also in the native kraal
of Lo Bengula many years ago, had too a very narrow escape. He had
dismounted to shoot a Kafir running a short distance in front of him,
when the latter turned and rushed at him shaking his shield in front of
him. Farley luckily carried a double-barrelled rifle, for he missed the
Kafir with the first shot, and only brought him down with the second
barrel when his assailant was so near him that his assegai struck the
ground close to his feet. Two other men were slightly wounded, but
these were the only casualties on our side, whilst the loss sustained
by the Matabele was very heavy, not only in number, but in the rank
of the men who were killed, for it was naturally the young and nimble
who were able to make good their escape, whilst the greater part of
the older men were overtaken and slain. Some of the latter, however,
outlived this fatal day by hiding themselves in the midst of thick
bushes.
That this impi should have dared to come close up to Bulawayo and take
up its quarters at a point on the Umguza where the bush was not nearly
so thick as it is farther down the river, at the point where several
large impis had already tried conclusions and failed to hold their own
against the white men, certainly took everyone by surprise; but since
then several hundred men of this impi have surrendered to Mr. W. Fynn,
and we now know that when they approached Bulawayo they did so under
the superstitious belief that their enemies would be delivered into
their hands by the Umlimo, and that they would be able to kill them all
without any loss to themselves.
The story is as follows: Since the outbreak of the rebellion there
has appeared amongst that section of the insurgents to which the
defeated impi belonged a man who professes himself to be the prophet
and mouthpiece of the "Umlimo" or invisible spirit. This man, it
is said, possesses the power of throwing himself into an ecstatic
condition, under the influence of which he swallows stones, rolls on
the ground, dances on hot ashes, puts burning coals into his mouth,
and goes through many other strange performances. He is known to the
Matabele by the name of "Si ginya amachi," "He who swallows stones,"
and his utterances have come to be implicitly believed in, insomuch
that when he called for an impi to go and destroy all the white men in
Bulawayo, he had no difficulty in getting a number of picked men from
seven different regiments to obey his behests. His orders were that the
men composing this impi should take up their quarters where we found
them on the Salisbury road, and there wait for the white men to attack
them. They were on no account to endeavour to prevent their enemies
from crossing the Umguza, but were to offer them every encouragement
to do so, "for," said the stone-swallower, "once they have crossed
to the east of the river the Umlimo will strike them all blind, and
you will then be able to kill them without trouble, and then go on
and murder all the women and children in Bulawayo." As the white men
were not struck blind, whilst on the other hand a large number of the
prophet's dupes lost their lives through their superstitious belief in
his supernatural gifts, it would be interesting to know how "Si ginya
amachi" has accounted to the survivors for his most dismal failure; for
the fact that he has not yet been put to death seems to show that he
has been able to offer some excuse which has saved his life up to the
present time.
It is this episode of the killing of a large number of Matabele at the
Umguza by the colonists _whom they had come to kill_, of which Mr.
Labouchere has made so much capital lately, and which has enabled him
to indulge in so many sneers against the white settlers in Rhodesia;
his stock phrase being "that the natives are being shot down like
game at a battue, with apparently as little danger to the shooters
as to those killing hares and rabbits." Now no one knows better than
Mr. Labouchere himself the utter recklessness of such a statement if
applied to the whole campaign, since it is evident that he is ever
on the watch for every scrap of news emanating from Rhodesia, in the
charitable hope of picking up something discreditable to the settlers
or to the government of the Chartered Company, and he must therefore
be well aware that the number of white men who have been killed and
wounded in the various engagements and skirmishes that have lately
taken place in Matabeleland is very considerable. But should any one
who does me the honour to read my story be either a constant or a
fitful reader of the pages of _Truth_, and be inclined to believe that
the editor of that journal is correct in his oft-repeated assertion
that the white men in Matabeleland have suffered an insignificant loss
in their encounters with the natives during the present rebellion, I
would ask such an one to turn to the Appendix at the end of this book,
and look over the lists which I have there given both of the settlers
who were murdered on the first outbreak of the rebellion, and also of
those who have since been killed and wounded in battle. These lists, if
compared with Mr. Labouchere's statements, will, I think, prove to the
most prejudiced that Truth—the everlasting Truth which we are told is
great and will prevail—is one thing, whilst Mr. Labouchere's _Truth_,
sold at all the bookstalls at 6d. a copy, is quite another.