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Updated: June 2, 2025
I had come to the conclusion, watching from Observation Hill, soon after daybreak on Wednesday morning, and seeing the enemy's convoys in three columns, miles long, trekking northwards, that they were in full retreat.
Following the line of his hand, we saw, not thirty yards away and showing clear against the sky, a file of antelopes trekking along the sand-ridge, doubtless on a night journey from one pasturage to another. "You fellows shoot," he muttered; "I might miss and frighten them away," for in his distress poor Higgs was growing modest. Slowly Orme and I drew ourselves to our knees, cocking our rifles.
The thoughts of the field-cornet were now turned to the west. It is true the swarm had last approached from the west; but Von Bloom fancied that they had first come down from the north, and that the sudden veering round of the wind had caused them to change direction. He thought that by trekking westward he would soon get beyond the ground they had laid bare.
Their failure to take fish was also beginning to dishearten them. Allan pondered the advisability of suspending day travel and trekking only by night, but had to give over this plan, for it would obviate all possibility of his sighting the landmark, the cleft mountain. Though he said nothing, the pangs of apprehension were biting deep into his soul.
They were lost; or perhaps they had felt the urgent need of trekking from Zululand back to a more peaceful country. I sent all the hunters I had with me to look for them, only Scowl and I remaining at the wagons, which in those disturbed times I did not like to leave unguarded. Four days went by, a week went by, and no sign of either hunters or oxen.
The pace of the trekking was now becoming phenomenal, and though the country was quite good, water was as scarce as ever, the bush being intensely dense, with thick sweet grass as much as eight feet high in places. It was a country made for ambushes. In less than a week General Botha had trekked over one hundred and twenty miles, the distance from Karibib to Otjiwarongo.
The other columns moved on, trekking night and day, as in the great advance across the Namib Desert.
So I just lay there and thought of my sins, and prayed to the Almighty, and thought that, after all, life was a very enjoyable thing. "And then all of a sudden I heard a crashing of bushes and the shouting and whistling of men, and there were the two boys coming back with the cattle, which they had found trekking along all together.
Now we hold you, we take you English magistrate near Ladysmith." But I know my kaffir, and I sized up this black Englishman instantly. "The fact is," I said, "I'm trekking with a commando of 500 men, and we are doing a bit of scouting round your kraal. If you will show me the way to the Biggersbergen I will give you 5s. on account."
This incident showed clearly enough that no news had come from Colenso to give our enemies confidence. Few of us, however, were prepared for the sight that met our eyes as we looked from Observation Hill across the broad plain towards Blaauwbank when the mists of morning cleared. There we saw Boer convoys trekking northward from the Tugela past Spion Kop in columns miles long.
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