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The rest garrisoned forts and blockhouses and guarded the far reach of frontier from Nova Scotia to South Carolina, where a wily enemy, silent and secret as fate, choosing their own time and place of attack, and striking unawares at every unguarded spot, compelled thousands of men, scattered at countless points of defence, to keep unceasing watch against a few hundred savage marauders.
Thirteen cannon thundered from the blockhouses one for each colony that had braved a king. There, in the miry square within the Vincennes fort, thin and bronzed and travel-stained, were the men who had dared the wilderness in ugliest mood.
Thus the guns had not been of much benefit to us, for the English had kept us so constantly on the move that it had been impossible to use them. The forces of the enemy between Harrismith and Vrede had formed a line extending from the Harrismith-Bethlehem blockhouses to the blockhouses between Vrede, Frankfort and Heilbron.
On the afternoon of October 14, the second and third platoons of Company "B" were occupying the blockhouses when the Bolos made an attack, which was easily repelled. As we were under artillery fire with no means of replying, the British commander decided to evacuate that night. It was impossible to get supplies out owing to the lack of transportation facilities.
The same season these were joined by a part of the battalion and other members of the Church who came eastward from California and the Sandwich Islands. Together they fortified themselves strongly with sun-dried brick walls and blockhouses, and, living safely through the winter, were able to reap crops that yielded ample provision for the ensuing year.
When we arrived at the Valsch River, there was a sound of shouting behind us, and presently the cattle appeared coming over a rise. I heard from the drivers that they had lost their way, and had only reached the blockhouses at daylight. But they had succeeded in breaking through under a fierce rifle fire.
Two main features have governed all our construction work; first, the large supply of timber, and second, the very cold climate. All of our barracks, washhouses, latrines, blockhouses, and stables, were designed to use available timber stocks. For a form of rapid construction we used double walls six inches apart and filled the spaces with sawdust.
We had therefore to be prepared to fight our way through the blockhouses. And these, as I found out lately, had been greatly strengthened. On the 6th of February I was on the march, intending to advance to Slangfontein, to the west of Heilbron. I sent orders to Commandants Mentz, Van der Merwe, and Van Coller, to take a portion of Commandant Bester's burghers, telling them to go to Slangfontein.
The defenses in the rear consisted only of a ditch and palisade, protected by two blockhouses, the upper story of one of which had been destroyed in the late cannonade. Above the fort were two batteries opposing those constructed by the British on Province and Carpenter's Islands, which were separated from Mud Island only by a narrow passage between 400 and 500 yards wide.
When Winwood fell wounded in the snow, between the two blockhouses at the foot of the cliff, that night the rebels met defeat at Quebec, the pedagogue remained to succour him, and so was taken prisoner with him. He afterward helped nurse him in the French religious house, in the walled "upper town," to which the rebel wounded were conveyed.
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