tried to persuade the burghers to be
content with their new commandants. It was evident, however, that many
were not to be satisfied and that they were not to be expected to work
harmoniously together. I therefore decided to let both commandants
keep their positions and to let the men follow whichever one they
chose, and I took the first opportunity of making an attack on the
enemy so as to test the efficiency of these two bodies.

Taking the two commandos with their respective two commandants in an
easterly direction to Wit River, we camped there for a few days and
scouted for the enemy on the Delagoa Bay Railway, so as to find out
the best spot to attack. We had just decided to attack Crocodilpoort
Station in the evening of the 1st August, when our scouts reported
that the English, who had held the fort at M'pisana's Stad, between
our laager in Wit River and Leydsdorp, were moving in the direction of
Komati Poort with a great quantity of captured cattle.

Our first plan was therefore abandoned and I ordered 50 burghers of
each commando to attack this column at M'pisana's fort at once, as
they had done far too much harm to be allowed to get away unmolested.
They were a group of men called "Steinacker's Horse," a corps formed
of all the desperadoes and vagabonds to be scraped together from
isolated places in the north, including kaffir storekeepers,
smugglers, spies, and scoundrels of every description, the whole
commanded by a character of the name of ----. Who or what this
gentleman was I have never been able to discover, but judging by his
work and by the men under him, he must have been a second Musolino.
This corps had its headquarters at Komati Poort, under Major
Steinacker, to whom was probably entrusted the task of guarding the
Portuguese frontier, and he must have been given _carte blanche_ as
regards his mode of operation.

From all accounts the primary occupation of this corps appeared to be
looting, and the kaffirs attached to it were used for scouting,
fighting, and worse. Many families in the northern part of Lydenburg
had been attacked in lonely spots, and on one occasion the white men
on one of these marauding expeditions had allowed the kaffirs to
murder ten defenceless people with their assegais and hatchets,
capturing their cattle and other property. In like manner were
massacred the relatives of Commandants Lombard, Vermaak, Rudolf and
Stoltz, and doubtless many others who were not reported to me