Zulu War of 13781879 155 



owing to the influence of Miss Colenso. He was 

 again the cause of unrest, culminating in the Bam- 

 bata insurrection, which was suppressed by the Natal 

 volunteer forces. Dinizulu was then placed on a 

 farm near Middelburg, Transvaal. During the Zulu 

 War I was in Utrecht, and walking outside the town 

 with my brother Fred, met a messenger who had 

 ridden hard from Helpmakaar with tidings of Lord 

 Chelmsford's disaster at Isandhlwana, and Cherm- 

 side's defence of Rorke's Drift. Sir Theophilus 

 Shepstone (who was then in Utrecht), was overcome 

 at these tidings as his son George was with the 

 Natal Volunteers under the ill-fated Major Durnford 

 (of Bushman's Pass notoriety), and he asked me to 

 read the despatches. The Magistrate who was 

 present exclaimed, " We are all lost, the Zulus will 

 be here directly." I begged him not to create a 

 panic in the town and laager and to keep calm. Sir 

 Theophilus gave me full power to do what I thought 

 beet, to put the place in a condition to stand an 

 attack, as there were many women and children in 

 a small laager, and some military stores. There were 

 some three or four hundred native followers of a 

 supposed loyal chief, Oham, quartered near the 

 village, so I appointed two young Boers, Lombard 

 and Potgieter, I think their names were, to supervise 

 these Kaffirs, and after buying up all the shovels 

 and pickaxes in the town, we set the Kaffirs to dig a 

 moat round the women's laager, leaving a foot wide 

 margin below the wall, which I packed with broken 

 bottles. I had sand bags placed on the walls with 

 loop holes, a wooden platform along the inside for a 

 second line of sharp-shooters above the lower loop- 

 holes, and two heavy gates and a drawbridge con- 

 structed, had stores carried in, and I am sure that 

 the Zulus could not have taken the laager when I 

 had finished it. During the work, Oham's Kaffirs 



