3-070-738 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

The Transvaal War: difficulties of travelling in South Africa: officers crossing the Ingagani River, 1881. Engraving on the front page from a sketch '...by our Special Artist with the Natal field force under the late Sir George Colley, recently engaged in the campaign against the Boers at Laing's Neck...[It] is an example of the curious shifts and contrivances to which it is sometimes necessary to resort in South African travelling. Here is a party of British officers crossing the Ingagani river, a few miles south of Newcastle, on their way to join the head-quarters there, who are compelled to leave their waggon and let their horses swim across, while they consign their own persons, two at a time, to the singular conveyance shown in our Artist's Sketch. This is a box suspended from a rope fixed to poles or trunks of trees on the two opposite banks of the river, and the box is hauled over by a party of Kaffirs, keeping them high and dry, at a considerable elevation above the water'. (The South African term 'kaffir', in reference to black people, is now considered extremely offensive hate speech). From "Illustrated London News", 1881.