In order to complete the dire destruction of this day of blood and death, a division of Zulus were sent round to cut off those who might escape by the river. These men were to be seen up to the armpits in the stream, stabbing any who might be in danger of escaping; and very few gained the opposite bank and lived. It was here that another leader, Blankenburg, was killed. Of the few who escaped, some swam, some dived, and some floated along, feigning to be dead. One Goba crossed the river four times and was saved at last. Petrus Roetrzie, or "Piet Elias" as better known by many, entered the river lower than most of the others, and got into the long reeds of the opposite bank, where the Zulus searched for him in vain.
In this terrible battle fell John Cane, Robert Biggar, John Stubbs, Thomas Carden, John Russell,--Blankenburg, Richard Wood, William Wood, Henry Batt, John Campbell,--Lovedale and Thomas Campbell, with two or three other white men, leaving not a dozen to return and tell the tale of woe. Of the Hottentots three or four returned; and of the Kafirs very few except Ogle's. The few who escaped arrived at home singly, many of them having been pursued nearly to the Bay of Durban, owing their deliverance to the shelter of the bush and the darkness of the night.
Most of the particulars herein recorded I can vouch for as being correct, having conversed with several who were engaged in the transaction, and others who were residing in Natal at the time.
Here endeth the extract that I have taken from Moodie's aforementioned history.
Now, judging by the foregoing account of the battle of the Tugela--which it must be remembered has been extracted, word for word, from a history written by a knowledgeable gentleman of undoubted veracity, who not only knew the survivors of the action, but had heard the yarn from their own lips, and that the story told me by the old trader who also had been acquainted with the majority of the men composing the English army, he being a full-grown boy at the time, and resident in Port Natal, coincided and agreed with Mr Moodie's narrative in all the principal details--I think I am not far wrong when I assert that the battle of the Tugela was a scrumptious one, in which every man engaged must have enjoyed himself to the utmost of his ability, and no one could subsequently grumble at not getting his fair share of the fighting. Yet when you come to consider the numbers and equipment of that invading force, and compare them with the resources at Lord Chelmsford's disposal when he began to play the same game, just forty years afterwards, and which were then declared to be inadequate, you are forced to come to the conclusion that Cane and his Lost Legionaries were a bit over-venturesome. For looking back at my own experience in the Legion, I do not think I could ever have found twenty men daring enough to undertake the same contract, and I am quite certain that, even had the men been willing, I individually should never have possessed sufficient pluck to have bossed the show.