The Matabele Campaign

New–comers take time to learn the value of spoor. Show them fresh spoor, and they will scarcely believe that it is that of the enemy, who should be somewhere in sight if he were not hiding, and, seeing nothing to be alarmed at themselves, they are apt to mistake discretion for funk, and foolhardiness for pluck; they think that precautions, to say the least, are derogatory; to see them saunter into danger, is as it were to watch a child playing on the edge of a cliff. It is that same foolhardiness that stands in the way of many men becoming good scouts; there are plenty who are ready, if asked, to go and look into hell’s mouth; but what one wants is a man who will not only go there, but who can see his way to getting back again to tell you what he saw. And to do this successfully he must be wary, and must notice all signs, however small, and be able to read their meaning.

A small incident which occurred to me the other day will give an example. I was out with a boy reconnoitring a hill occupied by enemy. In order to get a better view of it, we had to cross a difficult river, which lay between high, steep banks, and consisted of a chain of deep–water reaches and rocks, with only one practicable “drift,” or crossing. It was not a very safe proceeding to commit ourselves to one single line of retreat, but in this case there was no alternative.

So we crossed over, but kept, if possible, a more than usually bright look–out for enemy, while moving as far as we could under concealment of the bush ourselves. As we went, we took special note of guiding marks, such as would serve to direct us back to our crossing–place should we be obliged to make for it in a hurry. (This use of guiding marks, such as peculiar trees, noticeable rocks, etc., is too often neglected, and yet may often be invaluable).

We went on for about a quarter of a mile beyond the drift, and then, leaving the horses with the boy, I climbed up a koppie and got a view of the place.

So far, we had seen no niggers about, but presently, glancing back towards the drift, I saw three buck suddenly appear, coming as hard as they could away from the bush near the river and towards us. Presently they stopped, and, without noticing us, wheeled up and faced the way they had come, staring hard with pricked ears. For a moment or two they stood, and then, springing round, they dashed past us evidently fully alarmed. We did not wait to see what had startled them, but, clambering down the rocks, I mounted my horse, and we shoved back for the drift as fast as we were able, keeping our eyes “skinned” the while.

We got to the bank all right, and, looking into the gully that formed the river bed, were relieved to find it all clear; but, on looking back, we could now see a number of black heads and shoulders of niggers bobbing along among the rocks and bush, evidently hastening down to occupy the drift and to cut us off. Luckily, by acting on the hint given by the buck, we were before them, and were not long in getting across to the open ground on the other bank of the river.

The hint, as seen in the open, was but a very small one, and would probably mean nothing to the man who declines to accept hints; and were he always acting alone it would not matter much, except to himself, – for he would not live long to carry on his neglectful course, – and there is no objection to his being rash at times – in fact, for successful scouting, some risks have to be run; but when he has command of others, for whose safety he is responsible, it is another thing, and nothing may then be left to chance.

9th October.– At last, after trekking with weary, half–starved animals for eighty–seven miles from Inyati, we are in sight of our goal. Wedza’s Mountain, a noble–looking peak, can be seen peering over the intermediate range, at a distance of some twelve or fifteen miles from us. We are camped at Posselt’s cattle farm, where there is a certain amount of grazing for our beasts; but Posselt’s cattle are all in the hands of the rebels. The Native Commissioner of this district, Mr. Jackson, – eager and helpful, – has joined us, and also Lieutenant Yonge, with twenty men of the Belingwe garrison and a Nordenfeldt gun. But, to our great disappointment, they had no news of Paget’s column, with which we are expected to operate. Before leaving Inyati, I had sent runners to Buluwayo to report my departure on this expedition, and asking that Paget should be informed, by telegraph, that I should be about here this day (9th October), and I had hoped to find an answer from him awaiting us. On the other hand, we are much cheered to learn that the rebels in this district are still unsubdued and cheeky.

10th October (to be marked with a red mark when I can get a red pencil). – Jackson and a native boy accompanied me scouting this morning; we three started off at three in the morning, so that by dawn we were in sight of one of the hills we expected might be occupied by Paget, and where we hoped to see his fires. We saw none there; but on our way, in moving round the hill which overlooks our camp, we saw a match struck high up near the top of the mountain. This one little spark told us a good deal. It showed that the enemy were there; that they were awake and alert (I say “they,” because one nigger would not be up there by himself in the dark); and that they were aware of our force being at Posselt’s (as, otherwise, they would not be occupying that hill). However, they could not see anything of us, as it was then quite dark; and we went farther on among the mountains. In the early morning light we crossed the deep river bed of the Umchingwe River, and, in doing so, we noticed the fresh spoor of a lion in the sand. We went on, and had a good look at the enemy’s stronghold; and on our way back, as we approached this river bed, we agreed to go quietly, in case the lion should be moving about in it. On looking down over the bank, my heart jumped into my mouth, when I saw a grand old brute just walking in behind a bush. Jackson could not see him, but was off his horse as quick as I was, and ready with his gun; too ready, indeed, for the moment that the lion appeared, walking majestically out from behind the bush that had hidden him, Jackson fired hurriedly, striking the ground under his foot, and, as we afterwards discovered, knocking off one of his claws. The lion tossed up his shaggy head and looked at us in dignified surprise. Then I fired, and hit him in the ribs with a leaden bullet from my Lee–Metford. He reeled, sprang round, and staggered a few paces, when Jackson, who was firing a Martini–Henry, let him have one in the shoulder; this knocked him over sideways, and he turned about, growling savagely.

I could scarcely believe that we had actually got a lion at last, but resolved to make sure of it; so, telling Jackson not to fire unless it was necessary (for fear of spoiling the skin with the larger bullet of the Martini), I got down closer to the beast, and fired a shot at the back of his neck as he turned his head away from me. This went through his spine, and came out through the lower jaw, killing him dead. We were pretty delighted at our success, but our nigger was mad with happiness, for a dead lion – provided he is not a man–eater – has many invaluable gifts for a Kaffir, in the shape of love–philtres, charms against disease or injury, and medicines that produce bravery. It was quite delightful to shake hands with the mighty paws of the dead lion, and to pull at his magnificent tawny mane, and to look into his great deep yellow eyes. And then we set to work to skin him; two skinning, while the other kept watch in case of the enemy sneaking up to catch us while we were thus occupied. In skinning him, we found that he was very fat, and also that he had been much wounded by porcupines, portions of whose quills had pierced the skin and lodged in his flesh in several places. Our nigger cut out the eyes, gall–bladder, and various bits of the lion’s anatomy, as fetish medicine. I filled my carbine bucket with some of the fat, as I knew my two boys, Diamond and M’tini, would very greatly value it. Then, after hiding the head in a neighbouring bush, we packed the skin on to one of the ponies, and returned to camp mightily pleased with ourselves.

On arrival there, the excitement among the boys was very great, for, as we rode into camp, we pretended we had merely shot a buck; but when Diamond turned out to take my horse from me, he suddenly recognised the skin, and his eyes almost started from his head as he put his hand over his mouth and ejaculated, “Ow! Ingonyama!” (“Great Scott! a lion!”) Then, grinning with excitement, he asked leave to go and get some more of it. In vain I told him that it was eight miles away, and close under the enemy’s stronghold. He seized up an assegai and started off at a steady trot along our back–spoor. And very soon one nigger after another was doubling out of camp after him, to get a share of the booty. In the evening they came back quite happy with various tit–bits, and also the head. The heart was boiled and made into soup, which was greedily partaken of by every boy in camp, with a view to gaining courage. Diamond assured me that the bits of fat, etc., of which he was now the proud possessor, would buy him several cattle when he got back to Natal. Alas! I am afraid he may be reckoning without his rinderpest!

12th October.– No news yet from Paget, although Jackson has sent some runners to get round past the enemy’s country to communicate with him, and to tell him that we are waiting for his orders here. In the meantime, I do not intend to waste time, but shall go for one or two of the minor chiefs round about here; and shall also reconnoitre Wedza’s stronghold, so as to have, if possible, a map and report of it ready for Paget’s use when he comes.

To–day we have marched to the Umchingwe River, and our camp is close to where I shot the lion yesterday. We got there at midday, and our arrival was at once signalled by the rebels to each other by means of smoke–fires, lasting for about three minutes, on the two mountains which form the strongholds of Monti and Matzetetza. I had sent some native spies to find out where Wedza is now keeping his cattle, as, if they are grazed away from the stronghold, we might be able to make a raid on them, but the scouts have not yet returned; nor has Jackson come back yet with some friendly natives whom he went away to collect. But since the warning has been given to the various strongholds by these smoke–fires, I thought it useless to wait any further, and have ordered that this night, at sundown, all available mounted men (numbering about 120), should go to reconnoitre Wedza’s stronghold, taking two days’ rations with them.

Meantime I started in the afternoon myself, with Parkyn, my orderly, to act as interpreter, to go to Matzetetza’s, to see if we could get his people to talk with us, and if so, to advise them to surrender. They had already been attacked some weeks before by Laing’s column, which had driven them from their kraals for the time being, but they had since reoccupied them. But when Parkyn and I got there, we found the kraal apparently completely deserted, and though we shouted for anybody who might be in the caves to come out and talk, explaining to them that we were harmless individuals, merely coming to talk of peace, no one appeared; so we got nothing by our ten–mile ride, except the mild excitement of keeping our eyes open all the time, Parkyn being a little apprehensive of some attempt to cut us off.

So about sundown we rode back and got on to the path which would be followed by our party on its way to Wedza’s, and very soon we saw them coming along in the moonlight, or rather, we heard them long before we saw them, for the air was so clear and still, that though the column was supposed to be moving in silence, we could hear the men muttering to each other for seven minutes before they came up to us, that is, over half a mile. We ourselves, to test their eyesight, sat quite still, and found that we were not noticed until they were within twenty yards of us, although the moon was bright and our horses were grazing near.

As we went on past one of the strongholds, a signal–fire flared up above us, which was quickly answered by another one from the very hill to which Parkyn and I had been addressing ourselves in the afternoon, so that there had been natives there listening all the time. These signal–fires merely flashed up for a minute or two and were extinguished again; but it was very annoying to have one’s moves thus published. For a good part of the way it was very bad going, and we had to do much of it on foot, leading our horses across rivers, rocks, and bog; but at last, in the middle of the night, we arrived in the valley formed on one side by Wedza’s mountain, and on the other by a parallel ridge of bush–grown hills. On both Wedza’s and the opposite mountain we could see fires twinkling at various points, which showed that both were fully occupied by the enemy, who at the same time did not seem to suspect our presence between them. We formed square and bivouacked.

13th October.– Rousing up the men at half–past two, and leaving the horses with a guard of fifty men, we went on foot close under Wedza’s mountain, with the idea of lying in ambush there to catch some of his people getting water in the morning, and from them to get such information as we required as to the strength and disposition of the forces, the whereabouts of the cattle, and other interesting items. Along the foot of the mountain and parallel to it flows the Chingweze River, and we had to cross this to get to the foot of the mountain, and we found it a worse job than we anticipated, for the river was wide and deep except at one spot, where it was passable through a tumbled mass of great smooth rocks and boulders extending for about three hundred yards. On these the men with their nailed boots slithered and clattered to an awful extent, without making very much progress, and dawn came on before we had reached the desired position. Another quarter of a mile and we should be near the water–path, but it was just too late to get there unseen, so, as the daylight came on, we hid ourselves as best we could, close under the foot of the mountain.

Not far from us we could hear the talking and jabbering of the women and children, altogether unsuspicious of our presence. Parkyn and I then clambered up on to one of the lower koppies of the mountain, where we could get a view of what was going on; he took up a good position with his gun to cover my retreat in case of our being nipped there, and I climbed up higher to get a look into this little valley beyond in which all the talking was taking place. I was wearing what remained of my indiarubber–soled shoes, and so was able to get about pretty silently, but just as I was crossing an open space between two rocks, I heard a wild cry of alarm, and all the women calling to each other to run. I thought it was all over with our secrecy, so, clambering down again, Parkyn and I walked boldly out into the open and called to the people not to be frightened – that we had merely come to talk to them. To my great surprise, it was only then that they discovered us; the previous alarm had merely been given by some women who were lighting up fires which were to blaze up all over their gardens to kill a flight of locusts which had settled there, and they were only calling to each other to run and get out of the way of the flames. However, as we had now shown ourselves, we started a conversation. We told them that we had come to talk peace, and wanted to see Wedza; they informed us that Wedza was not at home, but that anything we liked to say would be reported to him. We soon discovered that it was actually Wedza talking to us; then we proceeded to tell them that a large body of troops were coming to smash them up in their stronghold unless they were wise in the meantime and sent in to make peace. Then Wedza remarked that it was a curious thing for us to come and suggest peace and then immediately to talk war, and especially to talk of smashing him in a stronghold which had withstood many an attack and had never been taken. At the same time, he would like to continue the conversation with us if we would come a little nearer, as he was rather hard of hearing. We guessed what his intention was, and neither went any nearer – for we were already on the rocks at the foot of the mountain – nor did we cease to walk about the whole time we were talking, because to stand still on these occasions, even though you may be holding a white flag up, often means to get a shot at you so soon as you offer a favourable target. For half an hour we endeavoured to persuade the old boy that he would be wiser to surrender, and we impressed on him that the troops who were coming would be here in a day or two, they would arrive most unexpectedly, and they were the Queen’s own troops, armed with special apparatus for bringing rebellious chiefs out of their caves, means which had never yet failed to effect their purpose. But he only invited us to come and try the experiment with them, and that he would afford the exception that proves the rule.

We then went back to the men, who had all this time been hidden close under the foot of the hill, and moved out into the open to go back to our horses. When the rebels saw this sudden apparition of armed men so close to them, they started yelling and shrieking all over the mountain, and from hilltop to hilltop the cry of warning and alarm was passed on, and very soon afterwards people from outlying kraals could be seen running for refuge to the main stronghold in the mountain.

As we recrossed the river to get to the horses, we saw a big crocodile in one of the pools, and the fresh spoor of a hippopotamus along the bank.

We lunched and spent the heat of the very hot day in the open valley in front of Wedza’s mountain, watched with curiosity by hundreds of rebels on the hill–tops; and then we moved off early in the afternoon to tackle the ridge of hills that lay on the opposite side of the valley. Working our way on to the top of this ridge, we moved along it from end to end, capturing rebels’ kraals, of which there were about half a dozen dotted along its length. The ridge was grown with thick bush and forest, and though we came across a few natives from time to time, they always managed to elude us in the jungle; we also saw a fine wild boar, which caused quite a flutter in my breast. “If I only had you in the open, my friend!” thought I. “If only you had a horse that was fit enough to come anywhere near me!” grinned he. And so we parted.

We took, altogether, four kraals, burnt them, and captured half a dozen cattle, and a number of goats and sheep; the natives all bolted into the bush or into caves in the cliffs of the hill. We got down off the ridge just as darkness was coming on, and we bivouacked out in the open plain pretty well tired out; but I have every hope that the advice we gave Wedza, and the surprise we gave him in the unexpected presence of our little force at his doors, and the object–lesson which the burning of the kraals and the capture of cattle on the opposite ridge must have afforded him, will, at least, shake his confidence, and help to simplify our task of capturing his stronghold, for it is a nasty–looking place to tackle, indeed, almost impossible for a small force. Laing had visited it, but considered it far too big a job for a column of two hundred and fifty men, and it will take every man of Paget’s column and mine combined to effect anything. The stronghold itself is a long mountain, consisting of six peaks of about eight hundred feet high, its total length being about two and a half miles, and its width about a mile and a half. On the extreme top of five of the peaks are perched strong kraals, and in addition to these there are three small kraals on the side of the mountain; underneath each of the kraals are labyrinths of caves. The mountain itself has steep, boulder–strewn, bush–grown sides, generally inaccessible, except where the narrow, difficult paths lead up to the various strongholds, and these paths have been fortified by the rebels with stockades and with stone breastworks, and in many places they pass between huge rocks, where only one man could squeeze through at a time. The paths are commanded by loopholes for musketry from the caves. The kraals are collections of circular mud huts with thatched roofs, built on crags near the tops of the hills, and on the most inaccessible rocks among them are perched the corn–bins; these grain stores are little circular pillars exactly like pillar letter–boxes at home, but made of wattle and daub, with a small thatched roof; a little hole is left near the top of the bin, just as the hole for letters in the letter–box, and through this hole the corn is poured into the bin. When full, the hole is sealed up with a flat stone and mortar. When one loots a kraal, the first thing to do is to knock out this stone, look in, and if there is corn there of the kind that you require, make a hole in the bottom of the wall and apply the mouth of your sack to it, and the corn will run in.