1864. He quickly made himself expert in musketry, and became instructor to his regiment in 1870; five years later a rebellion in Griqualand West melted before a small force commanded by Lieutenant Carrington, who had been selected for the duty on the strength of this special qualification. For the Transkei War in South Africa (1877-1878) he raised and commanded the Frontier Light Horse, which he led with extraordinary success against the Kaffirs, the Transkeian territories subsequently being annexed to Cape Colony. Early in 1878 he was given his captaincy, and in the same year he commanded the Transvaal volunteer force, with temporary rank, against the native chief, Sekukuni, in the Transvaal. In recognition of his previous work and of his services in this campaign he was gazetted brevet major, and later (1880) given a step in brevet rank and the C.M.G. After a brief respite Carrington was soon in action again, commanding the native levies against the Zulus. In the Basuto War, while in command of the colonial forces, he was surrounded at Mafeteng for nearly a month (September—October 1880) by 5,000 well-mounted Basutos. Though rations were so much reduced that horse-flesh had to be eaten, he and his little force gallantly held out until relieved by Brigadier-General (Sir) Charles Mansfield Clarke. Carrington was promoted colonel in 1884, and in the following year accompanied Sir Charles Warren’s expedition to Bechuanaland in command of the 2nd Mounted Infantry, better known as Carrington’s Horse. Subsequently he raised and commanded the Bechuanaland Border Police (1885-1893). He received the K.C.M.G. in 1887, and, in the Matabele War of 1893 he was appointed military adviser to the high commissioner.
In 1895, on promotion to major-general, Carrington took command of the infantry at Gibraltar; but before his time in that appointment expired he was again sent to South Africa, where he succeeded in quelling the rebellion in Rhodesia (1896). For his services in this campaign he was created K.C.B. (1897). On the outbreak of the Boer War (October 1899) Carrington’s unique experience of irregular warfare in South Africa made his appointment to a high command natural; and, with the temporary rank of lieutenant-general, he was selected to organize and lead an expedition which, starting from the east coast and marching through northern Rhodesia, entered the Transvaal soon after Lord Roberts had captured Pretoria (5 June 1900). In 1904 Carrington retired from the army, and pursued his favourite recreations—hunting, shooting, and fishing—at Cheltenham, where he died 22 March 1918. He married in 1897 Susan Margaret, only daughter of Henry John Elwes, F.R.S., of Colesborne, Cheltenham, by whom he had two daughters.
[The Times, 24 March 1918; Sir J. F. Maurice and M. H. Grant, (Official) History of the War in South Africa, 1906-1910.]
CASEMENT, ROGER DAVID (1864-1916), British consular official and Irish rebel, the younger son of Captain Roger Casement, third Light Dragoons, of Ballymena, co. Antrim, by his wife, Anne Jephson, of Dublin, was born at Kingstown, co. Dublin, 1 September 1864, and educated at the Academy, Ballymena. He belonged to an Ulster protestant family, whose ancestors had come from the Isle of Man early in the eighteenth century. He travelled widely in Africa as a young man. In 1892 he was appointed travelling commissioner to the Niger Coast Protectorate. Shortly afterwards he entered the British consular service, and in 1895 was appointed British consul at Lourenço Marques; in 1898 he was transferred to the west coast as consul successively at Loanda for Angola and at Boma for the Congo Free State. In 1908 the agitation against the administration of the Congo Free State had reached its height, and public opinion in England made it necessary for the British government to take the lead in investigating the charges made. Casement was therefore ordered to report on the conditions prevailing in connexion with the rubber trade in the interior, and visited the Upper Congo. He had seen this region in 1887, and he admitted that much advance had been made in transport and European building since that time. But his report, dated 11 December 1903, disclosed that the whole system of collecting rubber was based virtually on unpaid labour enforced by penalties of which mutilation was among the commonest. The report was all the more damning because of its moderation in tone; its testimony was never shaken; it was, in fact, confirmed by the report of the official Belgian commission of inquiry two years later, and it was the solid foundation for the movement which ended in the extinction of the Congo Free State (1908).
Casement’s report had brought his name into prominence, and his personal distinc-
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