Art Treasures of Kinloch Castle: GEORGE BULLOUGH WORLD TOUR 1892 - 1895 NATIVES

GEORGE BULLOUGH WORLD TOUR 1892 - 1895
NATIVES - SOUTH AFRICA, AUSTRALIA &c.

Written and illustrated from first hand research by George W. Randall,

co-founder in July 1996 and former

Vice-Chairman Kinloch Castle Friends’ Association.

George Bullough aged 23 yrs.

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George Bullough (1870 – 1939, later Sir George, Baronet) was three days short of his twenty-first birthday when his father John died on the 25^thof February 1891 at the age of fifty-two.

Nineteen months later, in September 1892, twenty-two year old George embarked on a thirty-five month long world tour with his friend Robert Mitchell returning to Britain in August 1895 to be soon followed by what was termed a “six-month supplementary cruise” on his recently purchased ocean-going steam yacht Maria, which he renamed, Rhouma, arriving back at The Rhyddings his Accrington, Lancashire, England home in April 1896.

A twenty volume record containing over six hundred photographs

of their travels is located in the library at Kinloch Castle, Isle of Rum, Scotland, Bullough’s Highland hunting lodge built 1897-1900.

Regrettably each picture has only the briefest title, sometimes no title and all no date.

Robert Mitchell

In 1896 Mr. Bullough agreed to have published a series of reports of their travels written by his travelling companion, Robert Mitchell in
The Accrington Division Gazette

INTRODUCTION:

SEE END NOTES.

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I personally transcribed, researched and illustrated all twenty-eight articles
each published in full in my Art Treasures of Kinloch Castle Blog.

Sadly the articles only relate to half of the countries visited.

However, in order to complete my research I have selected a number of photographs from the remaining albums which cover China, California, New Caledonia, Batavia, Hawaii and Japan - the latter hand-coloured.

Blog 78: Album XIII - Natives, South Africa, Australia &c.

commences with the amazing early life story of Mr. John Robert Dunn, 1834 - 1895,

and his reputedly “forty wives of various colours”

followed by a selection of photographs from the first half of Album XIII.

JOHN DUNN'S WHITE WIVES, HE WAS SUPPOSED TO HAVE 40 OF VARIOUS COLOURS

J. DUNN. ZULULAND

Album XIII * Image 3 * Full size 8 x 6 inches
George W. Randall Research and Photographic Archive

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Cared for by native nurses and playing with native children young John quickly

learnt to speak both English and Zulu fluently. Financially secure

Robert commissioned an impressive homestead overlooking the Indian Ocean,

aptly called “Sea View”.

Over time John increasingly embraced the Zulu culture. His personality and

linguistic skills combined with the adaptability of youth enabled him to

naturally combine the inherited values of his roots with those of the land of his birth.

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George W. Randall Research and Photographic Archive

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Life for John was idyllic. He loved accompanying his father on hunting trips and soon became very proficient with a rifle. In 1847, only thirteen years old, John witnessed a life changing event, his father being trampled to death by an incensed bull elephant.

Further tragedy struck two years later when an outbreak of the highly infectious viral cattle disease rinderpest wiped out ninety per cent of herds bringing financial ruin in its wake. In order to stave off disaster Anne Dunn was forced to sell “Sea View” and with her daughters return to Port Elizabeth, where in 1851 she died. John was seventeen years old, alone and penniless.

For the next few months John worked as a transport rider until his dishonest employer cheated him out of his wages due to “lack of contract”. Totally discouraged, abandoning so called civilised society; John withdrew into the bush - the haunts of big game in Africa - taking with him Catherine Pierce, the fifteen year old daughter of his father’s former assistant and a Cape-Malay woman. They led a nomadic existence along the Natal/Zululand border and in 1853 John and Catherine married.

As a young frontiersman, skilled with a rifle and fluent in the native language, John very soon came to the attention of retired army captain Joshua Walmsley, the British Border Agent, and son of the mayor of Liverpool. Walmsley took the “coarse and uncultured” nineteen year old under his wing and, with his support, finished his education at the end of which John was appointed Walmsley’s assistant.

With a unit of native policemen John’s task was to monitor all traffic crossing the largest river in KwaZulu-Natal, the 310 mile long Tugela River from Zululand as it flows from the Drakensberg Mountains to the Indian Ocean.

Described by a contemporary, John Dunn was a “handsome, well-built man, about five feet eight inches tall with a good forehead, regular features and keen grey eyes. A closely-cut iron-grey beard hides the lower half of his bronzed weather- tanned countenance, the look of shrewdness and determination discernible in every lineament.

Wearing a tweed suit and wideawake hat he was more

neatly dress than the average colonist.

His manner being quiet and unassuming with no trace
of self-glorification.”

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Meanwhile tension was mounting in Natal. Zulu king, Shaka, founder of the Zulu nation and its most influential monarch who had ruled for twelve years, had been assassinated in September 1828 to be succeeded by his half-brother Dingane who ruled until he was murdered in 1840, to be succeeded by his forty-two year old half-brother Mpande who ruled until he died naturally in 1872. Despite his lengthy reign it was King Mpande's son, Cetshwayo who was de facto monarch from 1856 ultimately succeeding in October 1872.

In August 1879 following many clashes, culminating in the Battle of Isandlwana* on the 22^ndJanuary 1879 in which Zulu warriors overran Her Majesty’s 1^st Battalion, 24^th of Foot sending an icy shiver through Victorian society. Their complacency shattered, the British sent a far larger force to defeat the Zulu, which they did at the Battle of Ulundi on the 4^th of July 1879, the last major battle of the Anglo/Zulu War. King Cetshwayo KaMpande was deposed and exiled, first to Cape Town and then to London, where he presented his case in the presence of British officials before Queen Victoria. His pleas went unanswered.

In order to prevent any organised resurgence of Zulu power, Sir Garnet Wolseley, British High Commissioner for South Eastern Africa, divided Zululand into thirteen autonomous chiefdoms, by far the largest, which bordered Natal, was awarded to John Robert Dunn.

Finally, after agreeing to keep the peace King Cetshwayo was allowed to return to his country in January 1883. He died at the village of Eshowe on the 8^th of February 1884.

* Refer to: British Battles.com - Battle of Isandlwana
Norwegian Missionaries in Natal and Zululand 1844-1900 edited by Frederick Hale
Washing of the Spears by Donald R. Morris
Zulu Victory by Ron Lock
  Rise and Fall of the Zulu Nation by John Laband
   The Anglo Zulu War - Isandlwana: The Revelation of Disaster by Ron Lock