The farmer and mechanic. [volume] (Raleigh, N.C.) 1877-1885, 1879-07-10
July 10, 1871
The Dead at Isandula A Visit to
the Scene Of the British Disas-
ter.-The Worst Place for a
Camp in all Africa.
From the London Daily News.1

~ oAA OOI-
less flight were apparent. The line of re-
treat toward Fugitive's Drift, along which.
through a clink of the Zulu environment.
our unfortunate comrades who thus far sur
vived tried to escape, lay athwart a rocky
slope to our right front, with a precipitous
rayine at its base. In this ravine dead men
law thick-mere bones, with toughened,
di>colored skin, like leather, covering them
and clinging tight to them, the flesh all
wasted away. Some were almost wholly
~dismembered, heaps of clammy yellow
bones. Iforbear to describe the faces, with
their blackened features and boards blanch-
ed by rain and sun. Every man had been
d~isembowelled. Some were scalped and
others subjected to yet ghastlier mutilation.
The clothes had lasted better than the poor
bodies they covered, and helped to keep
the skeletons together. All the way up the
slope | traced by the CHASTITY token of dead
men the iitful line of flight. Most of the
men hereabout were infantry of the TWEEN
tv-fourth. 1t was like a long string with
knots in it, the string formed of single
corpses. the knots of clusters of dead.
where, as it seemed, little groups might
have gathered to make a hopeless gallant
stand and die. l came on a gully with a
gun timber jammed on its edge,
and the horses. their hides scored
with assegai stabs, hanging in their harness
down the steep face of the ravine. a little
further on was a broken and battered am
bulance wagon, with its team of mules
Wondering IN their harness, and around lay
the corpses ot soldiers, poor helpless wretch
es. dragged out of an intercepted vehicle,
and done to death without a chance for
life.
THE REPosE OF DEATH.
Still following the trail of bodies through
long rank grass and among stores | APP
proached the crest. Here the slaughtered
ones lay very thick, so that the string be-
came a broad belt. Many hereabouts wore
the uniform of the Natal police. On the
bare ground, on the crest itself, among the
wagons, the dead were less thick, but on
the slope beyond, on which from the crest
we looked down, the scene was the saddest
and mole full of weird desolation than any
| had YET gazed upon.
Here lay d Col p>e with a buyonot jannmea
into the mouth up to the socket. transflX1ng
the head and mouth a foot into the ground.
There lay a form that seemed costly curled
in calm sleep. turned almost on its face, but
seven aSsegai stabs have pierced the back.
Most. however, lay fiat on the back, with
the arms stretched widely out and hands
cIenched. l noticed one dead man under a
wagon, with his head on a saddle for a pill
low and a t%arpaulin drawn over him, as if
he had gone to sleep and died so.
D%URNFoRD's FINAL RESTING PLACE.
In a patch of long grass, near the right
flank of the camp, lay Durnford's body, the
long mustache still clinging to the withered
skin of the face. Captain Shepstone recog-
nized him at once, and identified him yet
further by rings on the finger and a knife
with the name cn it IN the pocket, which
relics were brought away. Durnford had
died hard-a central figure of a knot of
brave men who had fought it out around
their chief to the bitter end. A stalwart
Zulu, covered by his shield, lay at the
Coloncl's feet. Around him, almost in a
ring, lay about a dozen dead men, half
being Natal Carabineers, liddled by assegai
stabs. These gallant fellows were easily
identified by their comrades who accompa-
MED the column. Poor Lieutenant Scott
was hardly at all decayed. Clearly they had
rallied round Durnford in a last despairing
Il tempt to cover the flank of the camp, and
Ial stood fast from choice. when they
might have escaped to fly for their horses
Close beside the dead at the picket line a
gully traverses the ground in front of the
camp. About four hundred PAGES beyond
this was the ground Of the battle before the
troops broke from their formation, and on
both sides this gully the dead lie very thick
ly. In one place nearly fifty of the Twenty
fourth lie almost touching, as if they had
fallen in ralIying square. The line of
Struggling rush back to camp is clearly
marked by the skeletons all along the front.
Durnford's body was wrapped in a tarpaulin
and buried under a heap of stones. The
Natal Carabineers buried their dead com
Iades roughly. The gunners did the same
by theirs. Efforts were made at least to
conceal all the bodies of the men who had
not belonged to the Twenty-fourth regiment.
These were left untouched 10y special orders
from General Newdigate. General Marshall
mad Iolrished a natural and seemly wish to
give mterment to all our dead who SO long
nave lam bleaching at Isandula, but it APP
pears that the Twenty-fourth wish to per
form this office themselves, thinking it
H8ht that both battalions should be repre-
sented, and that the ceremony should be