Sir Harry George Wakelyn Smith

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—

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:—

After thanking the troops, the Order continues—