Rensselaer Standard, Volume 1, Number 6, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 26 July 1879 — A DARING DEED. [ARTICLE]

A DARING DEED.

* Aii Incident of the Flint Kaffir War In South Africa. A reader of the Rochester Union and Advertiser furnishes the following incident of the first Kaffir war in South Africa, which has never before appeared in print: •, A short paragraph on the word “assegai” (pronounced as guttural as the Caucasian throat can pronounce it), coupled with the information that it was not to be found in Webster’s Unabridged, met the eye of the writer of this sketch the other day, recalling to his mind an incident of the first Kaffir war. The facts stated are true, and were told to the writer by a son of the principal engaged in it, corroboration of which can be had by consulting the ' records of the Horse Guards, for they

‘ are there recorded with official exactThe late General Donovan, known to almost every one some years back, in the city of Cape Town, etc., as the man with the lion’s voice, for many years commanded that famous corps, the Cape Mounted Rifles. As an evidence of the strength of his lungs it is stated that he could drill his regiment with perfect ease at a quarter of a mile off. He was, at the time of the first Kaffir war, a captain commanding a troop in the,, above named regiment. He was over six feet in height, perfectly proportioned, and possessed of muscular strength rarely given to human being. Scarce knowing what fear meant, a consummate horseman, well skilled with his weapons, he invariably defeated-the enemy whenever they had an encounter, himself coming off scatheless, so that he got to be regarded by the natives as bearing a charmed life.

The Kaffirs, then *as now, fought with address and determination, and were, and are, peculiarly cruel to their captured. If not Immediately and humanely slain by innumerable stabs of the deadly assegai, they were usually reserved for the fearful torture of being flayed alive after suffering nameless indignities. The Kaffirs, particularly the Zulus, made a vow that if ever the “devil captain,” as they called Donovan, or What was the equivalent, in their gutturals, fell into their hands, his fate would be worse than any that had preceded him, and he knew they were meti of their word. In one of the fights that took place in the up-country, not far from where the present tragedies are being enacted, the captain’s luck seemed to have deserted him, and he and his command fell into an ambush in a gully between two rifts of hills common in that country. His men were all most all either killed or wounded, his horse shot from under him, saber broken, and pistols empty. He apparently was at the enemy’s mercy. Donovan knew that small mercy would be accorded him, and as two Zulu chiefs famed for their ‘ strength and bravery, advanced to capture him alive, he seized one literally in each hand, and with his enormous strength doubled by the despair of the moment brought their heads together with a deadly crash. One of his wounded men afterward said that it was like the sound of broken bottles. One chief was killed outright, and the other so maimed that he lived but a day or two. The rest of the baud fled with terror, now thoroughly convinced that he was not a man, but a demon. The survivors aud the dead chiefs were shortly after brought in by reinforcements of the regiment. Donovan was hardly ever again opposed duringthe continuance of the war.