808 EXPEDITION INTO 



others. Halstead, unable to quiet his own apprehensions, 

 had concealed in his coat sleeve an open clasp-knife, with 

 which he stabbed two of the warriors who were preparing" 

 to seize him ; and for this achievement, after having* been 

 made the spectator of the horrible massacre of his hapless 

 companions^ he was skinned alive, and finally put to death 

 by means of the most revolting* and barbarous cruelties. 



It subsequently transpired that E-etief and his infatuated 

 compatriots had owed their safety on a former occasion to 

 the disobedience of a chief, who had been instructed by 

 Ding-aan to destroy them ; and who, being* doomed to pay 

 the penalty of his rebellion, had narrowly escaped with life 

 to Port Natal. Together with the news of the treacherous 

 massacre just detailed, intelligence was also carried to the 

 English settlement, that immediately upon the completion 

 of the bloody work, his Majesty had detached an over- 

 whelming* force to surprise the emigrant camp. Messen- 

 gers were thereupon instantly despatched to warn the in- 

 tended victims of their danger, but in consequence of the 

 swollen state of the rivers, they unfortunately did not 

 arrive in time to avert the calamity. Fatally blind to their 

 perilous situation, and relying implicitly upon the specious 

 promises of a crafty and covetous savage, in whose eyes 

 human blood is accounted as a drop of water, the emigrants 

 had never dreamt of an attack, and were totally unprepared 

 to receive it. Scrupulously did the Zooloo warriors carry 

 into execution the inhuman mandate of their treacherous 

 master. In the dead of the night of the 17th February, ten 

 thousand savages dashed pele mele into the slumbering 

 camp : and arousing its drowsy inmates with Avhoop and 

 yell from their dreams of peace and security, drove off twenty 

 thousand head of cattle, and indiscriminately butchered 

 between five and six hundred souls, without reference 

 either to age or sex, — barbarously mutilating and cutting oflf 



