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The two seven-pounders and the 12-1/2 pounder opened on the Boer line, making good practice under Captain Kincaid-Smith and Captain Gosling at 1,900 yards. This fire was kept up until 5 p.m. The Boers made practically no reply, but lay quiet in the trenches and battery. Two Maxims accompanied this force; a strong troop with a Maxim formed the right and left supports on either flank.

An incident of the same fight was a duel between two captains of the opposing forces. In the early parts of the engagement the burghers and the soldiers were so close together that many hand-to-hand encounters took place and many a casualty followed. Captain Scheppers, of the Boer heliographers, desired to make a prisoner of a British captain and asked him to surrender.

Knowing the General and the difficulties, I am inclined to ask, not whether he might have succeeded sooner, but rather whether anyone else would have succeeded at all. But to the chronicle! Anyone who stands on Gun Hill near Chieveley can see the whole of the Boer position about Colenso sweeping before him in a wide curve. The mountain wall looks perfectly unbroken.

These two forces, of Methuen and of Clements, moved through the country, sweeping the scattered Boer bands before them, and hunting them down until they dispersed.

To review the place generally, I and my orderly walked off some half-mile to the north of the river. As we were going some distance, we doffed our helmets and wrapped ourselves in two beautiful orange and magenta striped blankets, borrowed from our Kaffir lady guests, in case any stray Boer should be lurking around, as he might be interested to see two "khakis" wandering about on the veldt.

John Robinson, the Director General of the Johannesburg Educational Council, has reckoned the sum spent on Uitlander schools as 650 pounds out of 63,000 pounds allotted for education, making one shilling and tenpence per head per annum on Uitlander children, and eight pounds six shillings per head on Boer children the Uitlander, as always, paying seven-eighths of the original sum.

Well might the Boer commander declare that in the whole course of the war he had seen no finer example of British courage. It is indeed sad that at this last instant a young life should be thrown away, but Sutherland died in a noble fashion for a noble cause, and many inglorious years would be a poor substitute for the example and tradition which such a death will leave behind.

The Boers were discovering that they were incapable of waging systematic warfare and were on the point of resorting to guerilla, for which they, as well as the arena, were by nature particularly well adapted. On the Boer side there was a transitory interval of weakness.

No papal bull of indulgence ever freed people's consciences more than the Boer people now feel in regard to the warfare in which they are engaged. The Boers in the Cape Colonies have been prospering in a marked degree since the British accession in 1814, enjoying ideal liberty and good government upon perfect equality with the English colonists.

Three gallant officers Dick, Elliot, and Best went down; but the rush of the men was irresistible. At the edge of the ditches the supports overtook the firing line, and they all surged into the trenches together. Then it was seen how perilous was the situation of the Boer snipers. They had placed themselves between the upper and the nether millstone.