Sir Harry George Wakelyn Smith

VOYAGE TO THE CAPE—MILITARY DUTIES AND SPORT, 1829-1834—SIR BENJAMIN D’URBAN SUCCEEDS SIR LOWRY COLE AS GOVERNOR OF THE COLONY.

The stormy element, as if to atone for the violence with which it treated us on our voyage from Nassau, now behaved most moderately. We had a strong breeze across the Bay of Biscay, but as it was abaft the beam we did not feel it, and our whole passage was one of fine and moderate weather. This was very fortunate, as the brig was so heavily laden, that at the beginning of the voyage her main chains were positively under water. We were well found in everything, and had the whole after-cabin to ourselves. The captain was an able navigator, both nautical and astronomical. He gave me a list of his stock on board, and requested me to manage dinner, etc., saying, “There is, I think, plenty, so that if we live badly you will be to blame; but the brig is deep and no great sailer at any time, so calculate on a three months’ passage, to make sure.”

The captain was a most excellent and kind-hearted man, a regular British tar. During the war he had been in the Navy, and prided himself on having been the coxswain of Captain Seymour on a frigate whose name I forget. “Lord, Sir,” he would say, “he was a proper taut hand, but a real gentleman.”

During the whole voyage our captain, who had a studious turn for mathematics and astronomy, was always hard at work, and highly delighted to explain the methods of his nautical calculations. He would exclaim, “Oh! if I had been so lucky as to have had a real education, I think I should have made a mathematician and astronomer.” He was a large powerful man, and had a forehead as clear and as prominent as that of Dr. Chalmers.

Our voyage was more fortunate than the captain had anticipated, and in eleven weeks we anchored in Table Bay. I had never been at the Cape before, but I had heard much of it from part of my Corps which touched there years before [March, 1807] on their way to Buenos Ayres, and as I had read every book about it which I could lay my hands on, I was scarcely in a foreign land. As soon as I landed, I found that the Governor, my old and noble General, Sir Lowry Cole, was not at Government House, but residing in the country. I then went to look for my dear old friend John Bell and his noble wife, Lady Catherine. They were in an excellent house of their own, and as rejoiced to see me as I was to see them. John and My Lady would hear of nothing but our putting up with them, Johnny saying, “Harry, you and I and Juana have fared more sparingly together than we will now.” The carriage was ordered, and John and I went on board to bring the wife ashore, all delighted at our happy union after an absence of years.

Next day John and I drove out in his buggy to breakfast with the Governor. He and Lady Frances, that noble and accomplished woman, were delighted to see me, but oh, how she was altered! When I first knew her in 1815, a few days after her marriage, she was in the prime of life, a full-blown beautiful woman, and the most interesting I ever knew. As soon, however, as my old recollection of her was somewhat subdued, I found her ladyship everything I had a right to expect, the mother of six beautiful children, whose education she conducted herself, and my gallant General all kindness and hospitality.

He and I had a long walk in the garden, when he said, “I shall appoint you Commandant of the Garrison. You are ex officio, as second in command to me, the senior Member of Council, and, if any accident happened to me, the administration of the government would devolve on you—John Bell, your senior officer, being Colonial Secretary and holding no military position.”

No man was ever more happily placed than I was. The quarter in Cape Castle forming the residence of the Governor was excellent, with a little square in the rear with capital stables and out-offices. The garrison consisted of one company of Artillery, the 72nd Highlanders, a magnificent corps, and the 98th, very highly organized, considering the short period they had been raised.

My first object was to visit and reduce the guards, which I soon did very considerably on a representation to the Governor. The next was to do away with guards over convicts working on the road. This could not be effected at once, but such a friend to the soldier as Sir Lowry was, readily received my various representations of the ill effects on discipline of these guards, and, so soon as arrangements could be made, these were also abolished. The next guard to dispose of was one of one sergeant, one corporal, and six privates at the Observatory, four miles from Cape Town, and it was not long before the building, or the star-gazers, discovered that their celestial pursuits could be carried on without the aid terrestrial of soldiers.

Some months after my arrival, the Kafirs being on the eve of an outbreak, the Governor, Sir Lowry Cole, went to the frontier. He requested me to remain at Cape Town unless a war began, when I was immediately to join. I frequently had the troops bivouacked, and taught them to cook in camp, piquets, etc., and every other camp duty. On one occasion I had ball cartridges, every company at its target, and I had out two six-pounders with their target. I manoeuvred the troops, so moving the targets as to be in their front, and I never saw half so good target practice with muskets before. The men were delighted and emulous beyond measure. The six-pounders, too, made excellent shots, and I had not a single casualty.

About this time that noble fellow, General Lord Dalhousie, arrived on his way out to India as Commander-in-Chief. I gave him a capital sham fight, concluding by storming Fort Amsterdam, at which he was highly amused. I knew his Lordship in America,[93] and we then and now had many a laugh at our performances at Vittoria, previously related.

The Kafir war ended in patching up old treaties, and the Governor returned. About this time I acted as Military Secretary and Deputy Adjutant-General, holding the appointments of Deputy Quartermaster-General and Commandant; and ultimately the appointments of Deputy Adjutant-General and Deputy Quartermaster General were blended, and I held both, being called Deputy Quartermaster-General.

Horses at the Cape are excellent. The breed had been much improved by Lord Charles Somerset, the former Governor, by the importation of some mares and several of the highest-bred English thoroughbred sires. I soon had a most beautiful stud. The sporting butcher Van Reenen had an excellent pack of fox-hounds, which he virtually allowed me to hunt, and many is the capital run we had, but over the most breakneck country that hounds ever crossed—sands covered with the most beautiful variety of the erica, or heath, and barren hills of driftsands. These are dug up by moles literally as big as rabbits. Their ordinary holes on hills and under-excavations no good hunter will fall in, but in their breeding-holes I defy any horse to avoid going heels over head, if his fore-legs come on them, although many old experienced hunters know them and jump over. I had one little horse not fourteen hands, descended from Arabs; he never gave me a fall, and I never failed to bring the brush to his stable when I rode him; but with all other horses I have had some awful falls, particularly after rain, when the sand is saturated with water and very heavy. Falls of this description are far more serious than rolling over our fences at home, where activity enables you to get away from your horse, as he is some seconds or so coming down, but in a mole-hole you fall like a shot, the horse’s head first coming to the ground, next yours, and he rolls right over you. When a horse’s hind legs go into a breeding-earth the sensation is awful, and how the noble animals escape without breaking their backs remains one of the wonders.

Every shooting-season I made a capital excursion, first to my sporting friend’s, Proctor’s. He was a retired officer of the 21st Dragoons, a capital sportsman, an excellent farmer, a good judge of a horse, and a better one of how to sell him to those whom he saw he could make money of. He had a family of thirteen children; his wife was a Dutch lady, still good-looking. My wife always accompanied me, as well as my friend Bob Baillie, of the 72nd Regiment, who was subsequently celebrated in the sporting magazines as a rider. We started with an immense waggon, eight horses, every description of commissariat stores, greyhounds, pointers, setters, retrievers, terriers, spaniels, and, under Proctor’s guidance, we had capital sport.

The partridge-shooting was nearly as good as grouse-shooting; the bird, called the grey partridge, very much resembled the grouse, and was a noble sporting bird. There is also the red partridge, large, but stupid to shoot. The best sport with them is to ride them down with spaniels. There are several sorts of antelopes, which lie in the bushes and jump up under your feet as hares do. These you shoot with buck-shot. Near Cape Town there is only one sort of antelope “on the look-out” like our fallow deer, grey, very handsome, and fleet, called by the Dutch the rhee-bok. On the frontier and in the interior there are a great variety of this gazing-deer, the most remarkable being the springbok, which is exceedingly swift, parti-coloured or pied, and they almost fly from you. They have the power of expanding their long hair on the top of the back, like opening and shutting a fan. The bonte-bok is in very large herds. These you are prohibited to shoot without a special authority from Government, and the number even which you may shoot is limited.

The variety of modes of shooting these antelopes is highly amusing. To shoot the eland, the largest species, as big as a two-year-old heifer, you go full speed in a waggon over ground so rough that, what with the speed, you can hardly hold on and preserve your guns. The animals, hearing all the noise, stop to gaze. The waggon is instantly pulled up, and you fire balls. After such a jolting, he is a steady fellow who fires with any precision.

You have pheasants, too, inmates of very stiff and thorny-bushed ravines; they afford good sport, but you must shoot them dead, or you will never find them. There are also several species of the bustard genus, but near Cape Town only the black and grey khoran, so called. On the frontier you have the ordinary bustard, a noble bird and excellent eating, weighing from 9 to 12 lbs., and a species of great bustard, weighing from 20 to 25 lbs. The latter is eatable, but coarse. These you shoot with balls. On the frontier, too, you have buffaloes, elephants, lions, camelopards, ostriches, etc., so well described by Major Harris that it is impossible to add to his faithful account.

Coursing at the Cape is not good. I pursued it much for the sake of hunting four or five couple of spaniels. Hares there never sit in the open as in Europe, but in low stunted bushes—half rabbits. However, this sort of coursing with the spaniels and greyhounds teaches your horse to become a hunter, and by rushing him after hares, he well learns how to tumble or to avoid tumbles.

In the course of our sporting tour, I used to visit the breeding establishments (then called kraals) of all the great breeders, I think, Melk, Kotze, Proctor, Van Reenen, Van der Byl, etc. Melk has six hundred mares, all running out in unenclosed fields. With such an establishment you would expect that he could show you three or four hundred one, two, and three year olds (for they are all sold by this age). He can never show more than seventy or eighty colts of the year, and the rest of the breeders can show no higher proportion. The thoroughbred mares are invariably in miserable condition, the cock-tails fat and sleek. Many of the mares, etc., are afflicted with a disease from an accumulation of sand in their stomachs and intestines.

It was thought far beneath the dignity of a gentleman at the Cape to ride or drive mares, but seeing that the mares were far finer and larger than the horses, and one-fifth of the price, I bought from Proctor two immense mares, as like English hunters as possible, for £45; a thoroughbred mare, 16 hands high, four years old, for my wife (a beautiful creature which very much delighted Lord Dalhousie); and another thoroughbred mare, 15½. They were the four finest horses in Cape Town. One of the carriage mares ruptured her bladder in the carriage, and died in a few hours. The large thoroughbred got a most tremendous fall out hunting, nearly broke my neck, and was chest-foundered ever afterwards. The other two I sold remarkably well. By some accident I never set up mares in my establishment again, but I was never so elegantly horsed.

What with my military duties and those of Council, I led a far from idle life, and there is an elasticity in the atmosphere at the Cape which conduces to a desire to take violent rides. The sun never heats you. I have ridden 140 miles in thirty hours to go to look at a horse or buy one, or to look at a particular line of country. I have been out shooting in the middle of the summer from daylight to dark, the sun like a furnace, the pummel of the saddle like a red-hot poker, your gun-barrel, after a few rapid shots, so heated you almost fear to reload, then come home at night (or slept out in the fields, if you like) and eaten a right good dinner, not in any way heated, and without either headache or cold. An exposure of this sort to the sun of India would probably cause a roaring fever or death.

This is the sort of life which I and my wife lived from 1829 to the end of 1834, enjoying the greatest kindness and hospitality, and living in happiness and sociability with every one. We had lost our dear kind friends, Sir Lowry and Lady Frances Cole, but he was succeeded as Governor and Commander-in-Chief, early in 1834, by a most amiable man, Sir Benjamin D’Urban, the most educated and accomplished soldier I have ever served with.[94]