Page:George McCall Theal, History of South Africa from 1873 to 1884, Volume 1 (1919).djvu/58

38 can be little doubt that if they had been successful at first the whole Pondo army would have joined them.

Smith Pommer visited Umqikela, and returned with ninety-three armed Pondos under command of Josiah Jenkins, a young man who had received a very good education, and who certainly knew what he was doing. He was a nephew of Umqikela, and when an infant had been given by Faku to the wife of the reverend Thomas Jenkins, who had brought him up and had him educated as if he was her own son. He spoke, read, and wrote English with as great fluency as if he had been English born and educated in London. He had given promise of becoming a useful man, had received an excellent training in bookkeeping and correspondence at Lovedale, from his earliest childhood had been accustomed to live as a European of a good class, and was professedly a Christian. This young man, piqued because he could not at once occupy a position in society that a Caucasian would need many years of patient labour to attain, and puffed up with conceit on account of his birth as a grandson of Faku, had gone back from school to Pondoland with an imaginary grievance, and having failed to be recognised as eminent in an intellectual capacity, was now making himself known as a mischief maker.

On the 11th of April the combined band of Pondos and Griquas under Jenkins and Pommer reached the farm of Mr. J. H. Acutt, about twelve miles east of Kokstad. They plundered the place, the Pondos using greater violence than the Griquas, and made prisoners of Mr. Acutt and a boy named Burton, whom they took away as hostages, but who were released by Pommer the same evening. The rebels then sent to Kokstad to demand the release of some men who were confined in the prison there, and when this was refused by Captain Blyth, they formed a camp under Adam Muis about two miles and a half from the village.