Campaigning in Kaffirland; Or, Scenes and Adventures in the Kaffir War of 1851-52. William Ross King
74TH HIGHLANDERS STORMING THE AMATOLAS.
The men's mess-tins and folded coats were grazed and torn on every side, and their firelocks shattered in their hands; in one or two instances the barrels were perforated as though they had been soft lead.
Under this fire we sent out two companies in skirmishing order, and climbing from rock to rock, exchanging shots with the enemy at close quarters, crowned the ridge with a cheer, and carried the position, driving off the defenders, who took refuge in a dense forest a few hundred yards in the rear. We now stood in their fortress, which was scattered with remains of roasted marrow bones and torn cartridge covers, the rocks stained with fresh blood. We were astonished at the strength of the position, which might have been held by a hundred regular troops against such a force as ours, with great loss to the assailants. Towards this forest (of fine timber, the first we had seen in the country), we quickly advanced across the intervening belt of turf-covered table-land. Here again they had the advantage of position; for unseen themselves, they opened a severe fire on us, killing one of our non-commissioned officers at the first volley, the ball passing right through his heart. Our Colonel and the Major very narrowly escaped, a bullet cutting through the clothes of the former by the waist; while the Major's haversac was shot through. Two more men fell wounded, and another, shot through the brain, dropped dead without a groan. The word forward was given by our gallant Colonel, who himself set the example, and we dashed into the wood under a rattling fire, and gave them another volley, which must have told severely; for though they always carry off their dead and wounded to prevent their casualties being known, we found as we advanced the bodies of five lying dead in one place, and twelve in another; and as we plunged after them into the tangled forest, the blood-spoor showed where others had fallen. The change was so great from the glare of the sunshine to the gloom of the forest, its thick foliage overhead interwoven with baboon-ropes and creepers, that we could hardly distinguish our enemies as they darted swiftly from cover to cover. Five rebel Hottentots were killed in a hole or pit half-hidden by bush. Another of our men was shot dead by a Kaffir perched in the thick branches of a lofty tree, from which he was brought down, riddled with balls, the body tumbling with a crash into the thicket beneath. A cluster of Kaffir and "hartebeest" or Hottentot huts (the former shaped like a huge bee-hive, the latter like a patrol-tent) was set fire to, without its being known, till half consumed, that they contained a number of wounded Kaffirs.
We continued skirmishing as they retired before us, dodging from tree to rock, and from rock to bush, taking advantage of every cover to give us a shot, while we kept up an incessant "independent-file-firing," as they retreated, step by step, till lost in thickets, impervious to anything but wild beasts or Kaffirs. Having driven them into their inaccessible retreats among the extensive forests clothing the higher steppes of the mountain, and inflicted a considerable loss upon them, we skirmished through a belt of wood on our right, and after completely scouring it debouched on an open, where we halted in column, and for the first time for nine hours sat down to rest our weary limbs. Here we assisted the surgeon in performing different operations on the wounded, whose cries for water were so constant, that our canteens were soon left without a drop to moisten our own lips, parched and blistered by the sun.
It was now two o'clock, and as not one of us had yet broken his fast, it may easily be imagined with what appetite we gnawed at our black biscuit. While thus engaged the enemy was observed stealing out, one by one, from the forest, and collecting on the open table-land, where our gallant fellows lay dead; and to our indignation we saw them, through the telescope, stripping the bodies, without our being able to prevent it, a deep gorge separating us; a few well-directed conical balls, from heavy metalled rifles by Egg and Purday, dispersed them at a distance of three-quarters of a mile; one was seen to fall. The party were rebel Hottentots (Cape Corps deserters), and Kaffirs, the latter perfectly naked, and armed with guns and assegais; two or three we could distinguish wearing the kaross, with head-dresses of feathers, from which fact, and their being the centre of divers knots, we concluded they were chiefs and headmen, holding councils of war.
We were joined here by the General and the rest of the forces, including Colonel Sutton's column, which had successfully attacked the enemy on the Victoria Heights, driving them from their position, and killing twenty, but with a loss of three men killed and five wounded (two of them mortally), and had burnt and destroyed two of their villages, which we saw blazing away fiercely, and sending up volumes of smoke on the Little Amatola across the valley. During our brief rest the rebels sent a messenger of truce to say they wished to surrender. Lieut.-Col. Sutton, riding out by desire of the General, held a parley with about fifty or sixty of them at the edge of the wood. They stated that they wished to leave their Kaffir allies, and requested a week to collect their own people, when they would give themselves up. But, as the General, of course, insisted on immediate surrender, and granted only half an hour instead of a week, they quickly disappeared into the forest, their object having evidently been only to gain time.
Observing the enemy again assembling on their former ground, the General ordered the 74th to return through the forest once more. As we worked our difficult way through the underwood, taking care not to lose sight of our right and left files, we kept a sharp look out every step of our way; for each thicket, hollow trunk, or jackal's hole, tuft of grass, or lofty tree, may conceal the stealthy Kaffir when least expected; in an instant the silent forest is suddenly peopled with a legion of naked savages, springing, as it were, out of the earth, with a deadly volley from their unsuspected ambuscade.
We passed the dead body of one of our men stripped naked, lying in the jungle with a ghastly wound in his chest; but having orders to advance through the belt, and join the column on the other side, it was impossible to stop to bury or remove it. When the column came up, a grave was dug for the other men; and the Colonel, on my reporting having seen the body, sent me back with half a dozen men to bring it in. We had, therefore, to retrace our steps about a quarter of a mile through the forest, at the edge of which a guard was placed to render us assistance if attacked. The magnificent trees, and the fallen trunks in various stages of decay, overgrown with creepers, or green with moss, forcibly reminded one of the backwoods of Canada. We proceeded in perfect silence, with arms ready at a moment's warning, and again came up to the body. The stems of two or three young trees, picked up by the way, and tied together by wild vine, served as a stretcher, on which we bore the body back, and without interruption, nearly to the edge of the wood. As we stopped at this point to change bearers, a sound like the sharp crack of a dry stick was heard; but as we could see no one, and a dead silence reigned around, we resumed our burden, from whose reopened wound a pool of blood had flowed where it had rested. We had just gained the open ground, when suddenly along the face of the wood there blazed a sharp fire of musketry, and the enemy sprang from every bush; our comrades of the extended company at the same moment briskly returning their fire. The balls again whistled past us, lodging in the trees with a sharp thud, or ploughing up the ground. One of our men was severely wounded in the knee, and died afterwards while undergoing amputation; the rest plunged into the forest in pursuit of the enemy, who left seven dead on the ground, carrying off many more dead and wounded. This interruption passed, we proceeded with the corpse to the grave, which the men had dug in the soft soil with their hands, billhooks, and bayonets, where we buried it with the two other bodies of the poor fellows who had fallen; and, having filled up the grave, carefully sprinkled it with dead leaves and sticks, a precaution which, as we afterwards learned from a Kaffir prisoner, was of no avail, for the crafty wretches soon found the spot, and dragging the bodies out, exposed them, as they said white men ought to be, "to the sun and the vulture."
We learned that whilst we were returning with the dead body an armed party of Hottentots came up, and sat down with Lieut. Gordon, who was posted with the company extended along the edge of the forest, and asked for bread and tobacco, stating themselves to belong to one of our native Levies, at that time at no great distance, and whom they strongly resembled in dress. Among them was a man in the Cape Corps uniform, who, when questioned as to his being on foot and in the bush, said he belonged to "troop A, Captain C——'s" and had, with several others, been ordered to dismount, and skirmish with the Levies, their horses being done up. Strongly suspecting they were rebels,