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Posted: Tue May 02, 2006 12:12 pm

I've only just thought of this after reading this thread. It never occured to me before. If Norris-Newman reported that they recovered 40 wagons of various types when the 3rd visit to the camp took place it must have been quite an expedition that was mounted on 21st May. They must have had a considerable number of oxen in anticipation of the recovery.

Posted: Tue May 02, 2006 4:05 pm

Dawn

I can't prove the cattle were in the Manzimyama Valley any more than anybody else can prove they were in front. But I am pretty clear that Maori Browne is describing them being driven in front of the right horn not the left. Also if they were in front (over 2000 of them) I can't help thinking they would have been mentioned in one of the descriptive passages in the sources. The safe place (against stock theft) for them, by night, would be in the saddle, with a watch of voorlooper lads to stop them wandering. I have an image on the am of the 22nd of some wandering out of the front of the saddle (and irritating Pulleine), perhaps to water in the Mpofane Donga, but the bulk being taken down by the voorloopers to the Manzimyama to be watered.

I think what Milne would have seen was a large dark smudge in the saddle - trek oxen largely tethered to the yokes (but some inspanned). This would enable him to discern that something had been done to concentrate the stock in one place. At the risk of being pedantic - he didn't say the oxen are being taken into camp - as in now - whenever now might be - he said they have been. as in at some point in the past - which I conjecture (on reasonably strong grounds) was at 0730.

Cattle - just one more unsolved mystery - is there no end to it!

Regards

M

Posted: Tue May 02, 2006 4:16 pm

Jon

Yes that's true, but worth bearing in mind that an empty wagon ain't the same beast as one stuffed with commissariat stores. I guess that 3/4 pair would be comfortably enough for an empty wagon.

Regards

Mike

Posted: Tue May 02, 2006 5:17 pm

Mike I agree that they needed less due to the lack of stores. They would have had to take a fair number as they didn't know how much kit was recoverable. Norris-Newman also says " Many interesting relics were found and brought away by others". I wonder what he meant?

Posted: Wed May 03, 2006 9:42 am

Mike and Jon

They used horses for the expedition on 21 May anyway. There is an engraving from the The Illustrated London News that shows the empty wagons being pulled by teams of horses. And Norris-Newman, in the same report as the one quoted, says "While the work of harnessing the horses to the best of the wagons..."

I guess oxen were extremely hard to find at that point, or gainfully employed elsewhere.

This brings me to another question, the answer to which may lost in the mists of time. Some of the wagons were hired. If a wagon owner lost his wagon in the battle (Not to mention his oxen and probably his best wagon driver), was he able to claim compensation from the Crown? If the army went in to recover the wagons, one would have to assume that at that point they had reason to believe that they owned them all. Any one got a copy of the hire contract to hand? Wink

Dawn

Posted: Wed May 03, 2006 10:03 am

Dawn...what with sickness in both horses and oxen plus the losses from the battle I daresay it was whatever they could get hold of. Below I have posted a piece by H Rider Haggard. I thought it was quite interesting.

Then I bought a beautiful team of twenty Zulu oxen, which I had kept my eye on for a year or two. Sixteen oxen is the usual number for a team, but I took four extra to allow for casualties. These Zulu cattle are small and light, not more than half the size of the Africander oxen, which are generally used for transport purposes; but they will live where the Africanders would starve, and with a moderate load can make five miles a day better going, being quicker and not so liable to become footsore.

What is more, this lot were thoroughly "salted," that is, they had worked all over South Africa, and so had become proof, comparatively speaking, against red water, which so frequently destroys whole teams of oxen when they get on to strange "veldt" or grass country. As for "lung sick," which is a dreadful form of pneumonia, very prevalent in this country, they had all been inoculated against it. This is done by cutting a slit in the tail of an ox, and binding in a piece of the diseased lung of an animal which has died of the sickness. The result is that the ox sickens, takes the disease in a mild form, which causes its tail to drop off, as a rule about a foot from the root, and becomes proof against future attacks.

It seems cruel to rob the animal of his tail, especially in a country where there are so many flies, but it is better to sacrifice the tail and keep the ox than to lose both tail and ox, for a tail without an ox is not much good, except to dust with. Still it does look odd to trek along behind twenty stumps, where there ought to be tails. It seems as though Nature made a trifling mistake, and stuck the stern ornaments of a lot of prize bull-dogs on to the rumps of the oxen

Posted: Fri May 05, 2006 10:15 pm

Jon and Dawn

This site really does have everything - now top-tips for vets from Rider Haggard!! I think I might trade my car in for a team of oxen - might as well after my journey on the so-called motorway tonight!

You can be sure the wagon owners squeezed the govt for every penny they could get!

Regards

Mike

Posted: Fri May 05, 2006 10:30 pm

For anyone who hasn't seen it here's a reference from a conductor who describes many of the trials and tribulations of the A-ZW transport situation and that dove-tails rather nicely with Capt. Wynne's posthumous book -

http://www.rapidttp.com/milhist/vol045hh.html

MAB