After five years’ work without any intermission, I made arrangements early in 1870 to take a trip up country as far as the Drakensberg, a range of mountains which divides Natal from the Free State and Basutoland. I proposed to visit Captain Allison “at home” in his border residency, to see the celebrated falls, where I had been told the Tugela, rushing over awe-inspiring and romantic precipices, leaps 1,500 feet at a bound, then to visit the Mont aux sources, where from one single spot the Tugela issues forth on its course to Natal, the Elands River to the Free State, the Caledon to Basutoland, and the Orange River through the Cape Colony to the Atlantic Ocean; and further to explore the cannibal caves of Usidinane, situated in the heart of Putini’s tribe and Langalibalela’s location.

My wife, myself, Captain Hill, of the Victoria mounted rifles, an amateur photographer and four natives formed our party. Getting the wagons, oxen and provisions all in readiness, we left Verulam on March 3d.

The country between D’Urban and Maritzburg, the capital of the Natal colony, ascends gradually from the sea level to an elevation of over 2,000 feet, sometimes in gentle slopes, sometimes in abrupt and rugged steps. Our road lay through the village of Pinetown, a noted health resort, round the cuttings of that precipitous height called Bothas Hill, which afforded glimpses in the far distance of the fantastic mountains, with their volcanic cones and extinct craters, of the Inanda location, and the gloomy defiles through which the Umgeni River could be seen twisting and winding. Then passing the Inchanga cutting, with huge blocks of granite hundreds of tons in weight studding the foreground, and Camperdown, a hamlet consisting of two or three homesteads and a third-rate roadside inn, we at last reached Maritzburg, some fifty miles from the coast. Here we remained over Sunday, and of course went to the cathedral and heard Bishop Colenso preach. The sacred edifice was crowded, as we were told it always was when this revered prelate occupied the pulpit; and I may here say that his noble and commanding presence, an attraction in itself, added greatly to the fascination of his eloquence. The sermon that the bishop gave us on the morning on which I heard him dealt with the trials and sufferings of Christ. In vain I looked out for heretical doctrines, but seldom has it been my privilege to listen to a sermon so devout in spirit and withal so orthodox.

It was difficult indeed, seeing and hearing him, to realize the opposition with which he was then meeting, or to comprehend the presumption, I might say the gnarling, that characterized the majority of his revilers.

While walking round the city I noticed that everything looked clean and cheerful. The streams of water running in open sluits along the side of the foot-paths, the clusters of weeping willows, the rows of stately syringas, and the pretty villas nestling in clumps of the densest foliage, conveyed the impression of ease and comfort. I also visited the various public buildings, including the banks, schools, library and hospital. On my last evening in Maritzburg, spending a few hours at the Victoria club, I met Judge Phillips (subsequently promoted to a similar judicial office in Cyprus), who, when talking over the route which I intended to take, told me that after reaching the summit of the Drakensberg and visiting the falls of the Tugela, I ought to come down again into Natal through a pass named after a certain chief Umbundi, “where,” he said, “you will have, if my information be correct, to pick your way through a forest of magnificent cypress trees such as you have never before seen.” I thanked him at the time for his information, and often since have I been glad that I took the judge’s suggested route, where, as he told me I should and as will be seen later, I found one of the grandest and most novel sights in South Africa. Next day, we left Maritzburg and ascended the Town Hill. Here we noticed the terraced character of the country, for this road rising step by step, at least 1,500 feet, landed us fairly on the plateau which forms the midland districts of Natal, where the long, rolling, grassy sweeps are the principal features of the landscape.

The cracks of the long whip, the shouts of the driver, the regular times to outspan and inspan, to eat and sleep, are the only events to break the monotony of a wagon journey. The power of the trusty wagon whip, with its crack so “loud and sharp,” has so bewitchingly been sung by Mr. Charles Barter, one of Natal’s oldest colonists, that I need not offer any excuse for reproducing it here. Many a time, to the tune of the “Fine old English Gentleman,” have I listened to the lay.

But the rest from work did us all good. About thirteen miles from Maritzburg we made a halt in order to see the beautiful falls of the Umgeni, which are close to the drift where we crossed. The river here has worn its way through piles of columnar basalt to the edge of an awful precipice, where in one terrific leap of 372 feet it has for countless ages fallen into the broad, deep pool below, the encircling rocks around being clothed with trees, exotic ferns and flowers both beautiful and rare. Many a tale was told us of “moving accidents by flood and field,” of the sudden, tumultuous rush of waters when a flood came down, of belated wayfarers and of rash unfortunates washed over into the abyss. Leaving the pretty village adjacent to the falls, with its church and wayside inn, reminding one of old England, we went on, still ascending, another 1,600 feet to the Karkloof. I must not forget to mention that a few miles before we came to this range we passed Lidgetton, where the early settlers under the Burns’ scheme were first located. Here our attention was drawn to the gentle puffs of smoke lazily curling up from the steam mills working away in the forest, where, almost unseen by mortal eye, they were turning out the timber from which the colony obtains most of its best wagon material.

Trekking slowly, we crossed the Bushman River, the natives, seeing our wagons from a distance, bringing chickens, marrows, pumpkins, and milk for sale, until we came to the village of Estcourt, prettily situated on its banks, where I enjoyed a nice plunge in the river, which here purls over a pebbly bottom in a clear and crystal stream. Curiously enough, the Mooi River, a few miles nearer the Drakensberg, is shunned by any species of fish for miles, while in this river they abound. Here we were awakened one night, having outspanned late, by the noise as of dogs licking out the pots under our wagon, but as we had no dogs with us, we could not make it out, until our natives next morning, from foot-prints they saw, told us that hyenas had been prowling all round us, which was in this part of Natal a matter of unusual occurrence.

Pushing on, our next stage was Colenso, where the Tugela, beginning to assume grand proportions, courses swiftly to the sea; here, leaving the main road, we turned to the left, and trekking thirty miles further along a by-road but little used, came at last to the picturesque cottage where Captain Allison was living, seven miles from the spot where the Tugela falls over the perpendicular face of the berg. After cordial greetings we rested for the night, being most kindly entertained by Mrs. Allison and her daughters. The place seemed an “oasis in the desert,” for here, far away from the civilized world, we suddenly found ourselves in the midst of a circle as highly cultured as they were truly hospitable. While fully acquainted, out of the world as their residence might seem, with the latest sensations in literature, and doings of the fashionable world in European capitals, our delightful host and hostess had not neglected the study of the zoology of the colony, as their small but carefully selected menagerie of cranes, mahens, quaggas, baboons, etc., was sufficient to prove. Next day, with native police and horses which our host had kindly provided, off we started before the sun was hot to visit the Cannibal caves of Usidinane. I recollect, even now, what a merry party we were that morning, and how we made the mountains ring with our joyous shouts and mirth. Our guides, infected with our exuberant spirits, chanted a war-song as they marched jauntily along in single file leading the way, while we, riding behind, followed them by a Kafir path which led over broken ridges up the steep, water-worn side of a rugged mountain. After climbing some frightful ledges on its face, we suddenly found ourselves in front of the entrance to the Cannibal caves of the once so-much-talked-of Usidinane. This man, now a petty chief, though formerly not possessing any tribal rights, used some sixty years ago to live in these caves with his father and other natives, who, as well as himself, were driven by starvation to become cannibals when the country was overrun by the impis and invading legions of the Zulu king, Chaka, and the war-cries of that despot’s braves reverberated through the mountains. Usidinane is still living, at an advanced age, in charge of a few descendants of these cannibals, who, when Natal became tranquilized, came forth from the shelter they had sought, and occupied ground in the immediate vicinity, and are now called by the tribal name of Amazizi. Off-saddling on our arrival at the caves, before we commenced our exploration, we greedily set to work and ate up all the provisions we had brought, the keen mountain air having made us ravenously hungry.

My wife, though an excellent horsewoman, was greatly fatigued, so we determined, the day being far spent before our examination of the caverns was finished, to remain all night in them and return next morning. With the caves themselves I was rather disappointed, as they were merely like huge lime quarries scooped out in the rocks, yet evidence was not wanting of their having been tenanted by human beings, the charred ceilings and the vestiges of fire and bone-ash being distinctly to be seen in their gloomy recesses. It is to my mind an interesting fact that human flesh is never anywhere chosen by man from a sense of preference—either necessity, not depravity, compels—or revenge, not appetite, prompts its use. Some savages consume human flesh as a sacred rite, a part of their religion in honor of the dead, some as a sentiment of affection, and others again with the idea that principles such as courage and honor are conveyed from the dead to the living.^[12]

Colonel Bowker, whose name is so honorably associated with Basutoland, in an article communicated to the Cape Monthly, in 1869, describing a visit to the Putiasana Caves, in that country, says: “There was but little disguising it [cannibalism], and the people when questioned spoke freely of it, as first a necessity and then a choice,” but this I think was simply native braggadocio. Charles Waterton, in his “Natural History Essays,” bears out my opinion. In his essay on “Cannibalism,” he says: “Before I can bring my mind to believe in the existence of cannibalism such as I have defined it at the commencement of these fugitive notes (the feeding of man upon man incited solely by the calls of hunger) I must be convinced that there really does exist a human being, no matter in what part of the world, who will slay his fellow man without any provocation having been offered or any excitement produced, but that he is known to deprive him of his life merely for a supply of daily food, just exactly with the same feelings and with no other than we should shoot a hare or a pheasant to entertain a dinner party.”^[13] I have quoted this eminent author verbatim, and though there appears to be an omission of some such word as “not only,” his meaning is sufficiently evident.

When the sun went down the night became bitterly cold, so lighting a large wood fire, we sat round its crackling flames, which threw a lurid glare on as motley a group as that cave had ever held within its walls. White and black, male and female, horses and dogs. There we might have been seen, clustered all night round the embers of the dying fire, dozing and “dreaming” anything but “the happy hours away.” At early dawn, all shivering and shaking, hungry and tired, we began our return to Captain Allison’s, where our native servants, not knowing what had become of us, were overjoyed on our arrival.

From the place where we were outspanned we could see standing out in bold relief some few miles away the magnificent panorama of the Drakensberg range, the white silver streak of the Tugela dashing down the mighty cliffs and dark, buttressed precipices in front, breaking into “snow-white foam, leaping from rock to rock like the mountain chamois,” and in the far distance, filling up the background of the picture, the towering crests 10,000 feet high, of Champagne Castle and Giant’s Castle, the highest summits of the range.

Resting a day and enjoying the inspection of Captain Allison’s stock, admiring his horses, trying their speed and jumping powers in hurdle-racing over the veldt, and indulging in a little long-range rifle practice, I made all arrangements to leave my wife at the foot of the mountain, ascend and see the falls from the plateau, which, although extending far backward into the Free State, is terminated so abruptly in front by the precipitous cliffs of the ever-frowning Drakensberg. Captain Hill being taken suddenly unwell, I started with three of the guides who had previously accompanied me to the Cannibal caves and some of my own “boys.” Climbing over a spur of the Drakensberg at Olivier’s Hock, I struck a lovely valley on the south side of a branch of the Eland’s River; but as the water was low at the time I was able to follow its meanderings for several miles. Jumping from boulder to boulder over the water holes in its course, I ascended the rocky bed of what was then a simple, gentle stream flowing along with quiet delight and singing the same old song to which generations (for this country had once been thickly populated) long since dead and gone had listened.

Suddenly, my guides, pointing to a large sandstone cliff up high in the banks overlooking the river, suggested that we should rest. Scrambling up we came to a large cave, when, to my intense surprise and delight, a perfect picture gallery presented itself, the whole of the walls being covered with rude Bushman drawings of bucks, elephants and men in different positions, gloriously promiscuous but remarkably graphic. The wild, the untamed Bushman I have never seen. Small and repulsive, he lives entirely by hunting with the bow and poisoned arrow, and although a few still lurk in the inaccessible cliffs of the Drakensberg range, which I was gradually nearing, the majority have been driven away by advancing civilization to the borders of Damara land and Lake Ngami. On again, after a rest of a couple of hours a few miles brought us to the pass, where the final struggle had to be made. What I had hitherto gone through was child’s play compared to the task now in front. Large perpendicular rocks, which to clamber over seemed almost an impossibility, stood in the way, as if blocking our further advance, and the pass itself contracting in width toward its summit, shut out the light and cast a weird and gloomy shadow over the scene.

At last, dead tired out, we gained the top of the mighty Quathlamba, 10,000 feet above the sea. Walking on a few hundred yards through the scarlet and purple heather, which here carpeted the summit, level like those of most mountains in Africa, I came almost at once to the banks of the long looked for Tugela, flowing quietly past to the tremendous brink, over which it was so soon to madly plunge and disappear. At a point in the semicircle of crags surrounding the falls I sat down with my “boys” all around me to admire the glories of a scene which they apparently enjoyed as much as I. Never anywhere, either before or since, have I beheld such a glorious sight, or one of such stupendous magnificence and savage grandeur. Neither cloud nor mist obscured our view, and there we sat perfectly entranced, never thinking of the flight of time, drinking in the beauty of the landscape, which lay stretched out, a glorious phantasmagoria, thousands of feet below.

Drinking a bottle of champagne, which at Captain Allison’s suggestion I had brought with me to the top, I, with the natives’ assistance, set to work and built a cairn, as a memento of the occasion, in the centre of which I placed the empty bottle with a minute of my visit inside; long ere this, however, I expect some wandering Bushman or Mosuto in his curiosity has leveled our handiwork to the ground, and felt the pangs of bitter disappointment on uncorking the bottle! The next thing was to prepare for the night. If it were cold in the caves below, what was it here? When the sun went down I had to crouch over a fire which some of the “boys” had contrived to light, though fuel was not easily found, while the others were busy making me a bed out of some dry heather which they had been gathering.

Turning in among this and the long grass they had cut, “tired nature’s sweet restorer, balmy sleep,” soon covered me over “like a cloak,” and in a few seconds I was indifferent to everything here below.

Early astir, we were welcomed by a most glorious sunrise, “the powerful king of day rejoicing in the east,” pouring forth a flood of beams tinted with such grandly gorgeous hues that with difficulty could I tear myself away after casting “one longing, lingering look” behind at a vista of such beauty as it may perhaps never again be my lot to behold. But before bidding this scene adieu, most likely for ever, the natives, by my order, pushed to the edge of the precipice a large boulder which they rolled over the face of the cliff, whilst I, with a stop watch, lying over the precipice with one of my men to hold me, lest I should become dizzy, marked the time the faint sound of its striking the rocks below came back to my ear. This I tried several times with the same result—twelve seconds—thus proving that the Tugela here falls in one unbroken sheet 1,600 feet.^[14] After a cup of coffee, following out one of my original intentions, I spent some time in searching for the fossil remains of the large dinosaur, a gigantic reptile, which had been obtained in these mountains, but without success. At last we set off to find Umbundi’s pass, leading to the Ulandi valley, named so by the Kafirs after one of the peaks of the berg, by which route I hoped we should return to the wagons. Following for two or three miles the edge of the Drakensberg, Captain Allison’s police found out the pass for which we were looking. We hastened on and coming to its entrance, immediately commenced our descent. It was a narrow gorge, a perfect chink in the mountain, and the pathway leading down by a gradual slope, we could see was nothing more than the acute angle formed by the meeting together of the opposite sides of the ravine. We left the top about 10 A. M., and progressed very satisfactorily for two hours, the scenery becoming at every step more fascinating, sublime and majestic.

We appeared to be gradually leaving the world behind and sinking down to unfathomable depths, while the cliffs above, majestically towering on each side, one after another disappeared from our view as we pursued our devious course.

At last we came to a sudden stop, an incident which will remain engraved on my memory as long as I live.

We were brought to a stand-still by a steep, smoothly-worn chasm in the rock, having a large and apparently deep pool of water, as clear as crystal and as transparent and sparkling as glass at its base. How to get past this obstacle was the question! None of my guides would venture to drop over into the pool, and as the sides were equally precipitous, we resolved, after mature deliberation, to turn back, and ascending again, creep along a narrow ridge running longitudinally with the pass but some 300 feet higher up the mountain sides. Thus avoiding the pool, we hoped once more to descend and regain the more beaten track which we had been obliged to leave. This we did in safety after experiencing immense difficulty and danger. The mountain ledge to which we had climbed, and along which we had contrived to limp our way, not being more than a yard wide, and being studded with large, slippery stones and bordered by precipitous cliffs both above and below, sloping at an angle of 45°. As we descended from this giddy height, we at once found ourselves in the forest of cypress trees (Cupressus Wellingtona, so-called after a botanist of that name) which I have before mentioned. These trees,^[15] clothed in their sombre funereal foliage, seemed altogether out of place, all the rest of nature seeming bright and gay, while they appeared doleful and sad. Making our way for some distance through what I may call this hypochondriacal freak of nature, we saw at last signs of returning life and animation, the sheep and goats browsing on the hillsides and the lowing cattle and neighing horses grazing on the “veldt” below. I breathed freely once more when we emerged from Umbundi’s gloomy pass into the valley of rare beauty and attraction leading to Captain Allison’s, and wound our way through the kraals of the Amangwani tribe, who people that locality, and I can assure my readers that I felt relieved when, after a long day of danger and excitement, I found myself safe at his hospitable house once more.

To my intense disappointment, I found that through some mistake all my party had left six hours before my return, leaving me to follow alone; so bidding Captain Allison and his family farewell, I rode after the wagons, but it was not until two next morning I caught them up outspanned nine miles beyond Colenso.

Nothing of particular moment occurred during our return to Verulam, where I shortly resumed practice, much invigorated by the change.