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.