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
We left Port Elizabeth at eleven o'clock a.m. The first day of the
march was fine, yet cool; the sky remaining overcast, yet without
symptoms of rain. The first thing we approached worth notice was a
salt-pan, looking more like a frozen lake upon which snow-heaps had been
scattered, than anything else. It is not to my purpose to describe
these singular works of nature here; I mention this one, lying about
four miles from Port Elizabeth, to call the attention of travellers to
the sight; as, being rather below the road, it often escapes the
observation of those who are enclosed within that "narrow receptacle for
the living," a bullock-waggon.
We reached the Zwart-kops, the spot appointed for our out-spanning for
the night, [unyoking the oxen and turning them out to graze] at about
five o'clock. The scene was certainly very beautiful. Imagine a vast
plain of fair green meadow-land, intersected, and in fact divided into
parterres, by tall thick bushes, which here and there grew in clumps and
copses, giving the ground the appearance of a vast park laid out with a
great deal of taste,--an amphitheatre of hills and mountains rising one
behind another, till the summits in the distance blended with the
clouds, gorgeously illuminated by the rays of the declining sun, whose
glory was soon succeeded by the milder light of the "gentle moon,"
beside which the comet, in strange contrast, spread its long and fiery
tail. One by one the tents had risen "side by side in beautiful array."
Arms were now piled; the younger soldiers, tired with their first
march, lounged on the ground in clusters, till roused by the older and
more experienced men, who despatched them to gather wood and fetch
water; and more than a hundred fires soon lit up the camp.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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