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Updated: June 13, 2025
I kept near to the Colonel and a while later found myself with him and a large, mixed body of men a little to the right of the nek which we had crossed in our advance from the river. Not long afterwards there was a cry of "The Zulus are getting round us!" and looking to the left I saw them pouring in hundreds across the ridge that joins Isandhlwana Mountain to the Nqutu Range.
With this relieving column was another Naval Brigade, consisting of men of the Shah and Tenedos. The Shah was on her way to England when, upon arriving at Saint Helena, the news of the massacre at Isandhlwana reached her.
From that day forward, there has been no more killing or trouble in British Zululand, which is ruled by Sir Melmoth Osborn, K.C.M.G., and the Queen has no more contented subjects than the Zulus, nor any who pay their taxes with greater regularity! But the Zulus as a nation are dead, and never again will a great Impi, such as swept away our troops at Isandhlwana, be seen rushing down to war.
To the right of us was a stony eminence and to our left, its sheer brown cliffs of rock rising like the walls of some cyclopean fortress, the strange, abrupt mount of Isandhlwana, which reminded me of a huge lion crouching above the hill-encircled plain beyond.
When the child has become a giant yes, even in those far-off ages when it is a very old giant, a king among the nations we may be sure that, from generation to generation, men will show their sons the mountain that was called Isandhlwana, or the place of the Little Hand, and a certain spot on the banks of the Buffalo River, and tell the tale of how beneath that hill the wild Zulus of the ancient times overwhelmed the forces of the early English settlers; of how, for a long night through, a few men of those forces held two grass-thatched sheds against their foe's savage might; and of how some miles away two heroes named Melville and Coghill died together whilst striving to save the colours of their regiment from the grasp of the victorious 'Children of Heaven.
He was attached to No. 3 column of the invading force, which it may be remembered was under the immediate command of Lord Chelmsford, and on the 20th of January, 1879, he marched with it by the road that runs from Rorke's Drift to the Indeni forest, and encamped that night beneath the shadow of the steep and desolate mountain known as Isandhlwana.
Also it struck me that his face was familiar to me. "Well," I said at last, "What is your name?" "Umbopa," answered the man in a slow, deep voice. "I have seen your face before." "Yes; the Inkoosi, the chief, my father, saw my face at the place of the Little Hand" that is, Isandhlwana "on the day before the battle." Then I remembered.
I asked him if that were all, pretending that the cart belonged to my Master, to whom it had been brought from the field of Isandhlwana, that he might be drawn about in it, who was too weak to walk. "The man said that if I would kiss him he would tell me everything. I bade him tell me first, swearing that then I would kiss him.
Moreover, it must be remembered by the sceptical that all who have ever been intimately associated with the African savage are fully agreed that he is gifted with certain strange, uncanny powers quite incomprehensible to the white man, as was indubitably demonstrated during the last Zulu war, when the natives exhibited an intimate knowledge of certain events notably the disaster to the British troops at Isandhlwana within an hour or two of their occurrence, and several days before the news became known through the ordinary channels of communication.
The events following the advance of the various British companies at Isandhlwana are exceedingly difficult to describe in their proper order, since the evidence of the survivors is confused. It would appear, however, that Durnford's mounted Basutos discovered and fired on a portion of the Umcityu regiment, which, forgetting its orders, sprang up and began to charge.
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