"I wish to goodness," the adjutant said, bitterly, "that Sir Harry Smith would take a cottage for two or three months close to the frontier; it would not be long before his eyes were opened a little as to the character and intentions of the Kaffirs."
"It would be a good thing," the major agreed, "but I doubt if even that would do it till he heard the Kaffirs breaking in his doors; then the enlightenment would come too late to be of any service to the colony. By-the-bye, the colonel told me yesterday he should send me forward next week to see after things. He says that of course if there is any serious trouble he shall go forward himself."
The following morning the draft of Cape Mounted Rifles embarked on board a steamer and were taken down to Algoa Bay, and landed at Port Elizabeth, drenched to the skin by the passage through the tremendous surf that beats upon the coast, and were marched to some tents which had been erected for them on a bare sandhill behind the town.
Ronald Mervyn was amused at the variety of the crowd in the straggling streets of Port Elizabeth. Boer farmers, Hottentots, Malays, and Fingoes, with complexions varying through every shade of yellow and brown up to black; some gaily dressed in light cottons, some wrapped in a simple cowhide or a dirty blanket, many with but little clothing beyond their brass and copper ornaments.
The country round was most monotonous. As far as the eye could see it was nothing but a succession of bare, sandy flats, and, beyond these, hills sprinkled with bush and occasional clumps of aloes and elephant trees. Upon the following morning the troop marched, followed by a waggon containing their baggage and provisions, drawn by ten oxen. A little naked boy marched at the head of the oxen as their guide, and they were driven by a Hottentot, armed with a tremendous whip of immense length, made of plaited hide fastened to the top of a bamboo pole. After a fourteen miles' march the troop reached the Zwart Kop river, and, crossing the ford, encamped among the scattered mimosas and numerous wait-a-bit thorns. The horses were then knee-haltered, and they and the oxen were turned out to feed till night. The next day's march was a very long one, and for the most part across a sandy desert, to the Sunday River, a sluggish stream in which, as soon as the tents were pitched, the whole party enjoyed a bath.