Page:George McCall Theal, History of South Africa from 1873 to 1884, Volume 1 (1919).djvu/151

 1878] Suppression of the Rebellion. 131 information that his chief Sandile was dead. After the engagement at Isidengi in which he had been shot nothing could be done for him, though he hved several days. Then he died, and so closely pressed were those with him by the parties scouring the forest that they could not even bury the body, but had thrown some leaves over it as all they could do to protect it. At the time of the engagement the chief M'as trying to make his way out of the forest and get to the Thomas river, where his sons Matanzima and Edmund, who had gone in advance, were in hiding. The prisoner described the place where the body was lying so minutely that Captain John Landrey, who was sent with a party to ascertain if the account was correct, had no difficulty in finding and identifying it. This was on the 7th of June. Commandant Schermbrucker then with some volunteers and soldiers and five hundred Fingos proceeded to the spot. The body was examined by Dr. Everitt, who found that a snider bullet had passed through the stomach and splintered two of the ribs. From the appearance of the wounded parts he judged that the chief had lived three or four days after being shot, and that he had been dead about four days. The left side of the face and the right arm had been eaten by some wild animal. Commandant Schermbrucker caused a grave to be dug, and in presence of the soldiers, volunteers, and Fingos, at eleven o'clock in the morning of the 9th of June the body of the principal leader in the rebellion was laid at rest. So perished the last of the direct line of the Earabe chiefs, Sandile the son of Sutu, great wife of Gaika, great son of Umlawu, great son of Earabe, right hand son of Palo, in whose time the Xosas occupied the country west of the Kei. Not one of his own people saw him laid in the grave, they were all his foemen who stood there. That he had brought this miserable fate upon himself, and that he had ruined and destroyed