Page:George McCall Theal, History of South Africa from 1873 to 1884, Volume 1 (1919).djvu/112

 92 History of the Cape Colony. [1878 In Galekaland matters were progressing favourably. On the 27th of January Captain Eussel Upcher with one hundred and fifty-five soldiers, one hundred and forty-one men of the mounted police, twenty-seven seamen, and four hundred Fingos left Ibeka, and in the afternoon of the same day reached a forest in which his scouts had informed him a strong party of the enemy had their quarters. He attacked them there, and succeeded in killing about forty of them, but did not drive them out and disperse them, as he wished to do. His casualties were one sailor and five Fingos wounded. The most stubbornly contested engagement in the whole course of the war took place at Kentani on the 7th of February 1878. Colonel Glynn had formed a camp there, which was enclosed by a quadrangular earthen bank of no great height, being intended more to mark the limits of the ground occupied than as an aid to defence. On the 5th of February some Fingo scouts brought word to the camp that they had seen a great many Galekas only a few miles away. Captain Upcher, of the first battalion of the twenty-fourth, who was in com- mand, then caused the earthen walls to be raised higher to serve as breastworks, and had his field guns placed in good position for use, in case he should be attacked. But no enemy appeared either on that day or on the following. There were in the camp at this time two hundred and four officers and men of the first twenty-fourth, eighty-three of the frontier armed and mounted police, seventy-four officers and men of Carrington's horse, one officer and twenty-five men of the naval brigade, sixteen artillerymen of the mounted police, and thirteen men of the Capetown volunteer artillery, in all four hundred and sixteen Europeans. They had one nine-pounder and two seven-pounder field guns, and one twenty-four pounder rocket tube served by seamen. About three hundred