spite of that, one of the poor things got her
head blown off (a d----d shame). . . . Afterwards two women and a baby
were brought to the camp prisoners. The same night they were taken out
by our Kafirs and murdered in cold blood by the order of ----. Mr. ----
and myself strongly protested against it, but without avail. I never
heard such a cowardly piece of business in my life. No good will come
of it, you may depend. . . . ---- says he would cut all the women and
children's throats he catches. Told him distinctly he was a d----d
coward."

Schlickmann was, however, a mild-mannered man when compared to a certain
Abel Erasmus, afterwards denounced at a public dinner by Sir Garnet
Wolseley as a "fiend in human form." This gentleman, in the month of
October, attacked a friendly kraal of Kafirs. The incident is described
thus in a correspondent's letter:--

"The people of the kraals, taken quite by surprise, fled when they saw
their foes, and most of them took shelter in the neighbouring bush. Two
or three men were distinctly seen in their flight from the kraal, and
one of them is known to have been wounded. According to my informant the
remainder were women and children, who were pursued into the bush, and
there, all shivering and shrieking, were put to death by the Boers'
Kafirs, some being shot, but the majority stabbed with assegais. After
the massacre he counted thirteen women and three children, but he says
he did not see the body of a single man. Another Kafir said, pointing to
a place in the road where the stones were thickly strewn, 'the bodies
of the women and children lay like these stones.' The Boer before
mentioned, who has been stationed outside, has told one of his own
friends, whom he thought would not mention it, that the shrieks were
fearful to hear."

Several accounts of, or allusion to, this atrocity can be found in the
blue books, and I may add that it, in common with others of the same
stamp, was the talk of the country at the time.

I do not relate these horrors out of any wish to rake up old stories to
the prejudice of the Boers, but because I am describing the state of
the country before the Annexation, in which they form an interesting and
important item. Also, it is as well that people in England should know
into what hands they have delivered over the native tribes who trusted
in their protection. What happened in 1876 is probably happening again
now, and will certainly happen again and again.