Before touching upon what I will term our local wars, that occurred during Major Lanyon’s term of office, I will very shortly refer to the fourth Kafir war in which the Cape Colony was engaged, and this I do because the contingent the Diamond Fields sent to assist in this campaign played a far from unimportant part.

This outbreak arose from a dispute between the Gealekas and their hereditary enemies, the Fingoes, the former looking with envy upon the tract of country across the Kei occupied by the latter, but which the former had at one time possessed. The war arose from an affray at a beer drinking bout in August 1877, the Gealekas attacking the Fingoes to revenge the murder of one of their friends, which had been committed in a scuffle at the feast which I have just mentioned. Directly after this, numerous incursions began to be made by the Gealekas into Fingoland, and old colonists could easily see that war was imminent, when in September Kreli could not be induced to meet Sir Bartle Frere, who at that time happened to be on the frontier.

Toward the latter end of the above-named year, the chiefs Kreli and Sandilli massed their followings in open rebellion against the government. Corps of volunteers were raised, and with the regiments of regulars in the Colony were marched against the savage hordes of the Kafir chiefs, under the control of General Thesiger, afterward Lord Chelmsford. The turn of the year came and no material change in the state of affairs had taken place. The Gaikas and the Gealekas were gradually creeping toward a fastness known as the Perie Bush. This bush is in reality a forest, in length some thirty miles and in width varying from two to seven, and terminating to the northwest in the Amatola mountains, an almost impassable range, contiguous to the old frontier town of Fort Beaufort. In consequence of the vast area to be covered by the troops, it was impossible to prevent the natives and their cattle in obtaining entrance into the bush.

Once there, they thought that they had an immunity from danger, for on the top of the range a vast plateau extends, where they might obtain luxuriant pasturage for their cattle and cool, refreshing springs of water for themselves. It almost appeared, as the first moon of 1878 rose upon that portion of the Colony, that the guerilla warfare would be interminable, and a cry for help was raised through the Colony, which reached the province of Griqualand West. One hundred and twenty of our young bloods volunteered for service five hundred miles away, and with that military ardor which characterizes all colonists, they slung their guns across their shoulders, sprang into the saddle, and were at once ready for the toilsome, dusty, wearisome journey by road to King William’s Town, for those were the days of no railways. Colonel Warren, now Sir Charles Warren, the chief commissioner of the metropolitan police, was their trusted leader. The force, though small, was plucky and inured to hardships, just the right stuff to fight the wily savage, whilst their commander was highly popular with his men. It was on Jan. 10th, 1878, that this compact band started from the Diamond Fields, and a fine sight it was when Colonel Lanyon, the administrator, made them a parting address at Du Toit’s Pan in the presence of at least 3,000, who had assembled to wish “our boys” “God speed.”

Marching some forty miles a day under a “sky of molten brass,” they arrived in King William’s Town on the 25th of the same month. At that time the chief Sandilli was on the move, so the Diamond Fields horse were stationed about fifty miles out of King William’s Town in conjunction with the hapless 24th, afterward annihilated at Isandhlwana during the now historical Zulu campaign. Patroling the country around was their main duty for some six weeks, during which time, although the commissariat department was fairly well attended to, much hardship was endured by reason of the daily rains and the inadequate tent provision supplied by the colonial government. Strange to say, little sickness was engendered, nor did the hardy fellows suffer subsequently from their exposure. The rebels having in the meantime congregated in the Perie Bush, an order was issued for the Diamond Fields horse to repair thither.

Just at this juncture the Pondoland difficulties were drawing to a crisis, and when the Hon. Mr. Lyttleton was deputed to go to Kokstadt, it was thought the little force under Colonel Warren would be ordered to escort him.

It turned out otherwise; the Diamond Fields horse was required for action, and all the men were delighted. They had not, they urged, come down country for escort duty, but to show their qualities as fighting men. At all events they had not long to wait, for after a short period of duty in the dense demesne of the Perie Bush a brush with the enemy took place. Such was the thick and jungle-like nature of the underwood, and such the natural advantages of the position which the enemy had chosen, that two officers of the corps, Captain Donovan and Lieutenant Ward, a gallant young fellow, well known in Kimberley, were shot by the savage horde, and there was no chance at that moment for their comrades to avenge their death. The little force bided its time. In a few days it was reported to Colonel Warren that a vast body of the enemy, advancing on foot, according to Kafir custom, in battalions, and headed by petty chiefs on horseback, were making for the Perie Bush. This was at an outlying station known as Debe Nek, midway between King William’s Town and Fort Beaufort, and in sight of the fastness wherein they believed their safety would be assured.

The Diamond Fields horse (increased at this time by colonial recruits) was detached, but yet there were fifty-seven men of the original corps who volunteered to go out to meet the enemy. The latter was estimated at 1,500, or in other words the odds were twenty-five to one against our men.

They came on, one huge phalanx, singing their war songs, and fired with an enthusiasm peculiar to the Kafir race. Taking in the situation at once Colonel Warren ordered his men to dismount and secure the protection of a wide sluit running to the left of the Fort Beaufort road. Telling off three or four to hold the horses, and holding fully a dozen himself, he ordered the men to commence firing, and many of the enemy fell, but, as the front row dropped, on came the vast mass behind.

As our brave fellows peppered away with the skill of sharp-shooters some seventy of the savage horde were laid low, and then dismay seized the remainder. From the advantageous position selected by Colonel Warren it was impossible for the enemy to know the strength of its opponents. Consternation, as I have said, seized the sable host, and like Sennacherib’s army they melted away even as snow, not, however, before several of the Diamond Fields horse got into hand-to-hand combat with them. Although the slaughter was great on the side of the rebels, yet of the little force under Colonel Warren only one man was wounded, who through his own neglect afterward succumbed. The news of this gallant defence filled the inhabitants of the Diamond Fields with exultation. Congratulations were telegraphed down to Colonel Warren and his men, while the friends of the brave band under him were highly delighted. The back of the rebellion had been virtually broken. The news spread, as news only can spread among Kafir tribes, and Colonel Warren was looked upon by the Kafirs as possessed of supernatural powers. It only required tact to complete the subjugation of the rebels, and the leader was not lacking in this quality. It had been known that the women folk of the Kafir tribes intrenched within the Perie Bush were habitually allowed free ingress and egress. This they made use of for the purpose of bringing supplies from King William’s Town.

Reporting this fact to the late Sir Bartle Frere, the then governor of the colony, Colonel Warren was advised to communicate with General Thesiger. That red-tape entangled officer, however, deigned no reply, and seeing the waste of public treasure involved by General Thesiger’s indifference, Colonel Warren decided to act, knowing full well, if successful, that he would have the full support of Sir Bartle Frere.

An opportunity of carrying out his plan quickly offered itself. Out of the Perie Bush, seeking supplies, and almost in a starving condition, came 600 women and children. Surrounded and made prisoners by the Diamond Fields horse they were fed and taken into King William’s Town and there handed over to the civil authorities, to be afterward sent to Capetown and apprenticed as domestic servants.

The husbands and fathers, rather than that those they held most dear should be separated from them, possibly for ever, appealed to the chiefs, some of whom perhaps were sufferers from Colonel Warren’s coup de main, and so ended the Gaika-Gealika rebellion.

This sudden termination to the war, however, I believe was also the termination in the friendship previously existing between General Thesiger and Colonel Warren.

About this time bad news was received from the northern border of Griqualand West. Bolasike Gasibone, it was reported, was committing acts of plunder and generally exhibiting a total disregard of the laws of meum and tuum, and in consequence Major Lanyon, the administrator of the province, left on January 21st, 1878, with 150 volunteers for Phokwane to punish him. The major was absent from Kimberley some twelve days, found that there had been no fighting, found no one with whom to fight, merely old women, children and cows; he collared the cows, and returned with the spoil to the diamond fields. Many laughed at the whole affair, but a more serious view was afterward presented for consideration when the Revs. Messrs. Bevan and Ashton, two well-known missionaries, appealed to the public for assistance for the poor natives, who, they stated, were starving. Major Lanyon to stay public indignation sent a so-called independent commission to report on the state of affairs, consisting of Mr. Lord, acting attorney general, a submissive admirer of every act of government, and Mr. Baillie, merely a subordinate in the survey department. The report framed was of almost interminable length, occupying fifteen pages in the government Gazette of March 16th, but before it was issued the public had openly expressed their anticipations respecting the document. The public was not, however, prepared for its “highfalutin” rhapsodies on the “duty of man,” nor for the strange citing of Holy Writ in its concluding sentence, in which natives, owners of the soil and living an independent pastoral life, were told, after all their cattle had been forcibly removed, “if any man will not work neither shall he eat.”

Two months later (April 13th, 1878), the administrator of the Transvaal solicited assistance against Sekukuni, and as preparations were being made to give him assistance news arrived of trouble on our southwestern border, which was confirmed by a dispatch on April 21st from Mr. H. B. Roper, the magistrate of Griqua Town. A call to arms was at once made and readily responded to. Major Lanyon again left Kimberley, in three days’ time, with 100 men for Koejas. As soon as he arrived at his destination he called upon the natives to put down their arms, which they refused to do, and as they occupied a position from which it was impossible to dislodge them without cannon, Major Maxwell was telegraphed to at King William’s Town to at once bring up some field-pieces. In the meantime volunteers were leaving Kimberley almost every day for the front to strengthen Major Lanyon.

During Major Lanyon’s encampment at Koejas the Griquas, who had up to that time remained quiet (the rebellion having broken out among a number of colonial Kafirs and Korannas living on the banks of the Orange River), rose en masse and besieged Griqua Town, which was surrounded by them for eight days. On the night of the eighth day Major Lanyon rode through them with twenty men undiscovered and joined some 100 volunteers who had managed, the same day, to get into Griqua Town from the Kimberley side. On the following day the rebels were completely routed at Driefontein in a decisive engagement which lasted twelve hours and driven into their fastnesses in the Langeberg. Major Maxwell, whose arrival was eagerly looked for, arrived at Koejas on May 25th with the cannon, just in the nick of time, as on the 31st 600 natives attacked the camp, when the guns which he had brought up materially assisted to secure the success of the day. During the time all these events had been occurring Colonel Warren and “our boys” had been burning to respond to the calls for assistance which had reached them from Griqualand West. They had heard how volunteers had been raised and had taken the field under the command of the administrator, and how the country on the southwestern border was in a state of tumult and insurrection. Springing to saddle the plucky band made forced marches, this time in the cold, pinching month of May. “The air bit shrewdly and ’twas bitter cold,” but with no covering save a blanket and the saddle for a pillow, they quickly reached the junction of the Vaal and Orange Rivers. Scarcely had the force (numbering then about 200 men) crossed the Vaal River than Colonel Warren scented the disaffected Griquas at Wittehuis, where they had “enschanged” themselves in a formidable position between the Kaap Range and the Vaal River. Here the rebels were attacked and routed, and after completing their defeat Colonel Warren and his men pushed on to Griqua Town.

Thence he and Major Lanyon proceeded to the Langeberg, where several engagements took place, in all of which the rebels were defeated. The most important of these skirmishes was that of Paarde-Kloop, at which an immense quantity of wagons, oxen, horses and sheep were captured. There is nothing which makes a native regret rebellion more than the loss of his worldly goods. Capture his stock and he is defeated.

After these engagements the administrator returned to Griqua Town, leaving Colonel Warren in command, and there received the sad intelligence of the skirmish at Manyeering, resulting in the death of Messrs. Paterson, Rawstorne and several other well-known persons. While proceeding as quickly as possible on his road to Kimberley, he was attacked by and succeeded in defeating a body of rebels at Campbell, some thirty miles from Kimberley, where he arrived in safety after being some two months absent from the seat of government.

Colonel Warren now made a detour, suspecting the enemy to be lodged in a mountain situated to the northeast, and distant from the Griqua Town road some twenty miles. Here he only found groups of chattering monkeys, instead of the Griquas he expected.

The rebels had fled!

After remaining a few days in Kimberley to settle some urgent matters connected with the government, Major Lanyon proceeded to Bechuanaland, where he was joined by Colonel Warren, and where after the battle of Taikoon and other smart engagements the rebellion was finally crushed.

I may here say that the rebellion among the natives who were once, it must be kept in mind, the owners of the soil, arose with the white man from difficulties mainly respecting land, and from the dissatisfaction generally felt by a large proportion of them with Colonel Warren’s previous decisions in this regard, which had driven them to utter despair; for it was not until entreaties and even tears had failed to have any effect that they resorted to rebellion. Colonel Warren was by nature hasty beyond description, autocratic to a degree, and bigoted in the extreme.

The manner in which the natives had been treated both by Stockenstrom in the land court and afterward by Warren was freely commented upon by colonial statesmen. Mr. R. Southey, formerly lieutenant governor of Griqualand West, gave utterance to the following significant words in the Cape house of assembly, when speaking on the subject: “So gross was the injustice sustained by these people in the land court that had I been a Griqua, I too would have rebelled.”

Mr. H. B. Roper, now chief of the detective department and police commissioner of Kimberley, then the resident magistrate of Hay, was accused in an official dispatch by Colonel Warren of having been the sole cause of this war through his magisterial judgments, and every endeavor was made by interested officials to throw the entire blame of the war upon him. This official’s record books were subjected to the private scrutiny of the attorney general by the magistrate who succeeded him, who by this means wished to curry favor with the powers that used to be, but, although his sentences were found to be decidedly severe, they showed no taint of what could be construed into injustice, and the sinister scheme with respect to him fell through.

When Colonel Warren became acting administrator of Griqualand West, he published in the government Gazette the names of a commission which was to sit at various places and inquire into the causes of the war, but it never sat once.

And why?

Because it was found to be indubitably certain that the answer to every question as to the cause of the rebellion would be “land.”

In the month of August, 1878, all the volunteers, including “our boys,” returned to Kimberley, the latter having been more than nine months in the field, when the proceeds of the prizes captured throughout the campaign were equally distributed among them.

The reception given to the volunteers by the Kimberley people and the inhabitants of the Diamond Fields generally was most cordial and enthusiastic, reviews, balls and dinners being the order of the day.

As a resumé of the events of the war, I may here state there had been during the campaign fully twenty engagements, attended with considerable slaughter in the rebel ranks, from whom vast herds of cattle and numberless wagons were captured, while on the side of the volunteers the average loss amounted to little more than one man per engagement.

The rebellion brought attendant miseries in its train. The prisoners, including old men, women and children, were removed to Kimberley as soon as captured, and miserable objects they were.

In piercing cold weather, it being the middle of winter, with scarcely a stitch of clothes to their backs, they were sent up in wagon-loads, and penned like so many sheep in a yard adjoining the jail. In all they numbered some 700. During their confinement, extending over some fifty days, at the rate of three a day more than one-fifth died, and the survivors were exposed to public gaze in order that the townspeople might select those whom they chose for domestic service. The ravages of syphilis among these Griquas were perfectly astounding, scarcely a man, woman or child being free from its secondary effects. These prisoners of war, virtually slaves, soon one by one made their escape to their homes, and the government very wisely, on peace being proclaimed, did not enforce the terms of their apprenticeship.

But notwithstanding the victory achieved by our arms, native disturbances were not altogether finished. Shadows of a disturbance among the Korannas at the Salt Pan, near Christiana, darkening the air, Colonel Warren thought it better to nip any rising among these people in the bud. In this case there was “much ado about nothing.” The émeute commenced through a difference of opinion between a Koranna and a Dutch farmer concerning a cow, in which a German missionary took the part of the native.

The affair was so much magnified that Colonel Warren went up to Christiana accompanied by volunteers in January 1879, and sent for Hermanus Lynx, the captain of the tribe, and the German missionary to come before him. After inquiring into the affair Colonel Warren deemed it sufficient to put the missionary on his parole d’honneur, which parole the German missionary incontinently broke.

It then was deemed necessary to take more decisive steps, and a body of men were next day sent to the Salt Pan to arrest the “reverend” violator of the first law of honor, which was done, and he was brought back to Christiana, not, however, without the loss of one of the volunteers, who was killed by the accidental discharge of a gun by a Koranna.

After this all became quiet and the volunteers returned to Kimberley. The whole of the affair was much exaggerated, two men could just as satisfactorily have arranged the dispute between the Koranna and the Dutchman as two hundred.

Hermanus Lynx, the unfortunate captain of the Korannas, was confined for months a prisoner in the Kimberley jail, and Major Maxwell, the inspector of prisons, was compelled to state, when as vice-president of the legislative council I called for the papers in the case, “I have no warrant for his detention nor papers of any kind.” In a written statement which Hermanus Lynx afterward made, he imploringly said: “I want to know what I have done to merit my having been kept in prison for the past eight months. I have not committed theft nor killed any person.... I am not afraid.” As I have before mentioned I brought this poor fellow’s case before the council by asking the simple question: “For what crime and under what warrant is Hermanus Lynx confined a prisoner in the Kimberley jail?”

The illegality, the cruelty, with which this unfortunate chief had been treated would not bear exposure, consequently before the day came round on which my question must have been answered by the government Hermanus Lynx was a free man. This act of simple justice came too late to repair the injury done him. The government on his liberation supplied him with a tent, wagon and rations, but within a week he died on the banks of the Vaal River, ruined and heart-broken, having covered only twenty-five miles of his homeward journey.

Since the events chronicled in this chapter there has been no further disturbance among the natives in the country districts of Griqualand, for the possibly very excellent reason that there are no independent natives left.

About this time my colleague, Mr. George Bottomley, introduced an act into the legislative council amending the liquor laws of the province, which was much needed,^[64] and I fathered a private bill authorizing the supply of Kimberley with water from the Vaal River; but with the exception of continued progressive diamond legislation (which has been elsewhere fully detailed) nothing further of particular moment came before the council that session.