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When we found our horses we went to Ermelo, and stayed there until the enemy were so close upon us that General Louis Botha, who happened to be at Ermelo, and knew of our arrival, sent to say that we must leave the town. We then joined his force and rode to Spion Kop. 'In the land of the blind the one-eyed is king! Even so it was with Spion Kop of the Hoogeveld Ermelo.
These incidents must now be set down in the order of their occurrence, with their relation to each other so far as it is possible to trace it. General Louis Botha, with the double intention of making an offensive move and of distracting the wavering burghers from a close examination of Lord Kitchener's proclamation, assembled his forces in the second week of September in the Ermelo district.
A pale of blockhouses denied them access to the "protected area." Muller effected a trifling success in the middle north. Beyers in the Pietersburg district was unable to prevent Grenfell reaching a point but sixty miles from the Limpopo and there making prisoners of a local commando. No organized attempt was made to disturb Botha in the Ermelo district.
Botha, however, had had warning of his approach, and having conducted the Transvaal Government out of the area of immediate danger and dispatched it to its old seat at Paardeplatz, returned to deal with Bruce Hamilton, who, on reaching Ermelo on December 3, found, as French had found in February, that he had nothing to strike at.
The return of Botha, however, infused some spirit into the hustled commandos of the high veld, and he gladly accepted a suggestion that Benson should be attacked. The Ermelo and Carolina men who had accompanied him to Natal returned to find that their districts had been roughly handled by Benson and were eager for reprisals.
My old coloured groom "Mooiroos," who followed behind leading my horse, evidently thought the same, for he remarked naïvely: "Baas, the English will soon fix us in another corner; had we not better throw the cart away?" We drove into Ermelo that afternoon. The dread east wind was blowing hard and raising great clouds of dust around us.
We hurried thither as quickly as we could round the rear of the fighting line, where we were obliged to off-saddle and walk up to the position of the Ermelo burghers. This was no easy task; the battle was now in full swing, and the enemy's shells were bursting in dozens around us, and in the burning sun we had to run some miles. When we arrived at our destination Mr.
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