BOOKS.

CAPTAIN KING'S CAMPAIGNING IN KAPPIRLAND.* THE Seventy-fourth Highlanders were ordered to South Africa on the first conception of the serious character of the war against the Kaffirs, and there they remained till its conclusion ; marching and countermarching, fighting the enemy when they could get at him, suffering from cold by night, heat by day, hunger, thirst, fa- tigue, and privation, at all times. Of what was done or borne by himself, and by others within his observation, Captain King gives a plain account, varied by the brighter spots of campaign life,—as a dinner with the appliances of knives and forks, or a bed proper, that is something softer than earth or rock, while a roof to sleep under was even a greater rarity. The narrative as a whole seems disjointed, and in reference to the objects or movements of the army not distinct. Part of this may arise from the absence of a map, which should have accompanied the book ; since no atlas maps are of the detailed character neces- sary to follow the movements of the regiment or even a detach- ment. Another cause may be, that a corps is only a part of the army, and its doings except in actual fight necessarily imperfect- looking. We suspect that a vague unsatisfactory feeling in the reader's mind is owing to the plan or rather no plan of the earlier campaigning. When the Kaffirs made a foray, they were pursued, and the plunder sometimes recovered ; when they were heard of in force, they were marched upon. If they retreated before the soldiery, the army marched back again ; and the same result fol- lowed if the enemy waited to be beaten. In the large sense of campaigning, there is a mass of things but nothing distinct. In fact, the true plan of proceeding at the outset was the Duke's plan, or rather the invariable principle of the Romans; roads should have been made through the country, and if necessary the forests cleared. It was not uncommon to have to carry the same stronghold several times, and places for regular ambuscade were as plenty as berries.

The true characteristic of the book is individual campaigning in South Africa, or in any -unsettled country where forest, moun- tain, and desert plains pretty nearly alternate. And by cam- paigning is meant, all the incidents common to war—lighting, wounds, death, as well as hardships. In this point of view, Captain King's book conveys the best picture that has lately appeared ; probably because the dangers were equally great if not greater, while the state of the country rendered every mitigating appliance less. Here is a taste of wet.

"Late in the afternoon our long train reached the bivouac in torrents of rain, which again poured down with a steady relentlessness that soon flooded the camp, and we made up our minds for another wet night. On rising, at three o'clock next morning, we found little pools of water collected in the hollows indented in the soft ground by our hips and shoulders. We fell in, and stood for half an hour in the ranks ankle-deep in the mud, waiting for the waggons to move on, shivering like men with ague, our fingers so be- numbed that we could scarcely hold our rifles. After creeping along for about half a mile, we came to a complete stand-still at a small rise ; the road being oo slippery for the oxen, which cannot draw on wet ground ; and we had to return to our bivouac once more.

"Here we remained all day in the incessant rain, slushing about in the mud, and trying to keep our feet warm by pacing up and down as on board ship, for it was not safe in the thick fog to venture far enough from the camp for a walk. We busied ourselves also in trying to make the fires burn better; collecting stones, and building them up so as to raise the wood from the flooded ground."

Next day, by way of a variety, they had heat and hunger.

"The heat of the sun in the narrow road, shut in between thick forest, was intense, and told fearfully against the cattle. We had barely gained the top of the pass by three o'clock, and, with the exception of a single cup of coffee at two iu the morning, had not yet broken our fast ; for, unfortu- nately, none of us had any biscuit in our haversacs, as it was ration-day,' and we had expected to gain the top of the hill for breakfast. I was, how- ever, lucky enough to get a few raisins from a dirty but generous Dutch- men, to the envy of the less favoured. When we had fairly gained the open flat above, the covering party of artillery and infantry was withdrawn, and formed our rear-guard ; and in a couple of hours more we reached the camp, tar more fatigued by the slow creeping pace and constant halting than we should have been by a long day's march, and were so hungry and tired that we could not wait for anything being cooked. As for myself, having secured a lead-like loaf of camp manufacture, I devoured the whole of it, and fell asleep on the grass."

Except the attacks upon the strong position of Waterkloof, the affairs with the Kaffirs were of an irregular kind, with occasion- al displays that have a species of Homeric character. Here is a fight when a body of men were waylaid by a strong force of Kaffirs under Macomo himself, in a forest dealing a steep moun- tain.

"The road being exceedingly steep, narrow, and rugged, the cavalry in front marched down at a foot's pace, the infantry following, and the Fin- gee Levies bringing up the rear. The enemy concealed in the thick bush opened fire upon us the moment we entered the pass, wounding one of our men. We returned their fire whenever the smoke showed us where they lay ;

` Campaigning in Kaffirland, or Scenes and Adventures in the Kaffir War of By Captain W. It. King, 74th Highlanders. With Illustrations. Published by Saunders and Otley.

and thus continued our descent, with a desultory fire on both sides, till about half-way down, when they showed in still greater force, filling the bush on both sides of us. The Fingoes in the rear now evinced their fears so strongly as to encourage a party of Kaffirs, armed with assegais, to rush in among them. This completed their panic, and, firing right and left at random, they hurried headlong down the narrow path en masse upon our rear, with such force as to knock down and trample on many of our men, while by crushing through the ranks they hindered the others from loading. Emboldened by this, the main body rushed from their cover, hurled a discharge of their lighter throw- ing assegais, and then (with the heavier kind, used for stabbing) threw themselves upon us. Our steady fellows had little to depend on but their bayonets ; to the use of which they had fortunately long been regularly trained, and now used most effectually. The underwood swarmed with Kei- th-8; they were perched in the trees, firing upon us from above, and rushed front the bush below in hundreds, yelling in the most diabolical and feroci- ous manner, hissing through their white teeth ; their bloody faces, brawny limbs, and enormous size, giving them a most formidable appearance. "The narrow road was crowded with a mass of troops, Levies, and Kaffirs; the ringing yells of the latter heard above the din of the firing. Some, wrest- ling with the men for their firelocks, were blown almost in pieces, and many were felled and brained by the butt-ends of clubbed muskets. Our gallant fellows fought most bravely : one man, with an assegai deeply buried be- tween his shoulders, singled out its owner, and shot him through the head, with the weapon nearly protruding through his chest; a grenadier killed four Kaffirs with his own hand. The huge fellow already mentioned appeared suddenly among us, and seizing a soldier in his powerful grasp, hurled him to the ground ; but the man jumping to his feet in a moment, buried his bayonet in the fellow's back, and he fell dead on his face. Three Kaffirs had caught one of our men by the blanket folded on his back, and were dragging him into the bush, when the straps slipping over his shoulders, re- leased him, and he threw himself, unarmed, on the nearest, and wrestled with him for his assegai, both rolling over and over, scuffling on the ground ; the well greased body of the Kaffir giving him the advantage over the dressed and belted soldier ; whose death-wound was, however, amply avenged. The ground was soon thickly strewn with the black corpses of the enemy ; a score lay in the path, and here and there the lifeless form of a dead or dying Highlander; eight of whom fell, while as many more were wounded. Fight- ing our way through hundreds of the infuriated savages, we effected the de- scent of the pass: by the time we had reached the foot the enemy's fire had almost ceased."

It was at one of the attacks on the Waterkloof that the com- mander of our author's regiment, Colonel Fordyce, fell, with other officers killed or mortally wounded. The whole is told by Captain King with quiet pathos. This is the funeral, which took place at a station whither the killed and wounded were borne the next day.

"1 was in time to take a last look at the bodies of our chief and poor Carey, which were laid out in the commissariat forage-store, before the Ser- geant-Major nailed down the hastily-made coffins. The funeral will never be forgotten by those who were present. The thunder, mingled with the booming of the distant artillery, rolled grandly and solemnly among the mountains, as the motley groups from each regiment assembled in their worn and ragged uniforms. As the rough deal coffins were borne out, the 'firing party,' dripping wet, and covered with mud, presented arms, the officers uncovered, and we marched in slow time out of the gate and down the road, the pipers playing the mournful and touching Highland la- ment,' to where the graves had been dug, a few hundred yards from the post, and close to three others newly made, the last resting-place of our gallant men who had fallen on the 16th of October. "The funeral service was read by Captain Duff; the men with swarthy faces, and tattered dress, standing round, resting on their arms reversed,' while the thunder rolled unceasingly, and the inky black clouds threatened another down-pour. "Captain Carey, C.M.R., stood by the grave-side of his brave young kins- man; and as the bodies were lowered into the graves and solemnly committed to the earth, every one was visibly affected : the customary military honours were paid ; three times the roar of a hundred muskets reverberated among the hills ; the last faint echo died away in the distance ; the hoarse word of command broke up the motionless group ; one after another we stepped to the grave-sides to take a farewell look ; and marched back in silence to the fort.

"During our absence, a miserable barrack-room, with roughly-paved floor and smoke-blackened rafters, had been hastily cleared for poor Gordon ; into which we carefully bore him, and adding every obtainable blanket or plaid to the thin straw mattress, and doing all in our very limited power to cheer him and alleviate his sufferings, left him for the night with his trusty and attached servant Stuart.

"We found Ricketts, of the Ninety-first, who was mentioned as dangerously wounded on the 14th of October, in the Waterkloof, lying alone in a small room, in a very precarious state : be had no belief whatever in his danger, and talked gaily of what he should do when he got out again—though con- stantly interrupted by coughing and spitting blood, which bubbled out of the wound in his chest at every breath. "The hospitable detachment gave us, notwithstanding the great scarcity of provisions, a more substantial meal than we had seen for a long time ; to which we sat down twenty-one in number, at a long deal table, in a bare whitewashed room : but, as our kind entertainers had been unexpectedly sent up to the empty fort from the field in 'patrol order,' it was a much more difficult affair to provide a dinner-service than a dinner. At night we lay in our blankets on the floor, side by side ; and as we listened to 1 he mountain storm raging without, congratulated ourselves on sleeping under a roof, a luxury we had only once before enjoyed since leaving Cork.

"We visited Gordon again in the morning before starting for the camp, and assisted the surgeon to dress his wounds and arrange his bed ; and sat as long as we possibly could wiping his brow and moistening his lips. On leaving, he begged us to come over as often as we could to see him during his probable long confinement in this lonely place ; which we promised to do, but never saw him again. After three days of excruciating agony, the broken limb suddenly mortified, and he was carried off in a few hours : so died this young soldier, alone in a wild mountain fort, thousands of miles

away from home and relatives, with only a servant to witness his last mo- ments.

"Poor Ricketts, whose exquisite songs had so often enlivened our long evenings, died the same day, having been gradually sinking for some time previously. His death, which occurred some hours the first, was purposely kept from Gordon; but the sound of the funeral Tellies reached his ear, and in a quiet voice he blamed his servant for not telling him a it : in two hours after, a like salute was fired over his own grave."

The book is illustrated by sketches from Captain King's pencil, which, though inartistic and rough, convey an idea of the scene and the subject-with more literal truth than a finer, picture would. The more truly illustrative feature of the book is the formation of the soldier by actual war. A regiment like the Seventy-fourth Highlanders, weeded of its delicate and sickly, with its hardy soldiery accustomed to every form of danger, fatigue, privation, and exposure, must be, as the Duke said of his Peninsular vete- rans, worth three regiments of inexperienced troops.