The Cape and the Kaffirs: A Diary of Five Years' Residence in KaffirlandWard, Mrs.
History
The Cape and the Kaffirs: A Diary of Five Years' Residence in Kaffirland
Ward, Mrs.
South Africa -- History -- Frontier Wars, 1811-1878
"On the 17th December, we learn that Sandilla has at last surrendered
himself at Fort Hare, bringing in about forty head of cattle, and
several muskets and carbines taken from the waggons at Burn's Hill, on
the 17th of April, and giving up the two prisoners demanded by Colonel
Hare in February and then refused. One was the axe-stealer; the other
the murderer of the Hottentot. They were lodged in gaol. Another
prisoner, who accompanied them, died the night he entered his prison;
and, some time afterwards, the Kaffirs, affecting to suspect poison,
requested permission to examine the body, which was accordingly exhumed;
but was too much decomposed to allow of the forming any opinion on the
subject."
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Note 1. Another soldier of the 91st met with a cruel death at the hands
of the savages. Being too much exhausted to ascend the Amatolas, he sat
down by the way side. At night, when the roll was called, poor Ewell
was missing. The Kaffirs admit, too, that they took him through the
bush to a spot where some of their Chiefs were assembled with many
warriors. Here they tied their victim to a stake, and literally flayed
him alive; the little children being permitted to assist in tormenting
him. Oh, "pastoral and peaceful people!" The Kaffirs said that they
imagined the grenadiers of the 91st could not be killed, as the balls
appeared to glance harmlessly past them. Mr Cochrane, however, was
wounded three times on the last day in the Amatolas.
PART TWO, CHAPTER ELEVEN.
APPOINTMENT OF SIR HENRY POTTINGER.
The expedition across the Kei was still the theme of expectation during
the month of December, 1846. Sir Andries Stockenstrom's command of the
Burgher Forces had been deputed to Captain Sutton, Cape Mounted Rifles,
who was to proceed across the Kei in the intended foray.
At this time I wrote in my journal, "This is certainly an extraordinary
warfare. The enemy are coming into our camps eighty at a time,
enrolling themselves as British subjects, and obtaining cattle, which
they assert to be their own, and even horses; while we are marching
troops into Kaffirland, seizing plunder and meeting with little open
resistance, but running the chance of being murdered, as the Cape Corps
soldiers, were, in the hut. It is certainly very difficult to
understand.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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