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He had been at Bronkhorst, and Laing's Nek, and Ingogo and Amajuba, and supposed that the English did not run up their flag excepting at the end of a fight. Garrett's estimate of Jameson's total loss in killed and wounded for the two days: "When they gave in they were minus some 20 per cent. of combatants. There were 76 casualties. There were 30 men hurt or sick in the wagons.
Colley determined at last to try and open the road back, and with about two hundred and fifty men, with four cannon two of them mountain guns moved out. Some sixty soldiers were left on a commanding spot to cover the passage of the Ingogo. As soon as the force under Colley had got to the opposite crest of the ravine through which the river runs, they were attacked in great force.
On the 7th of February General Colley discovered that the Boers were flanking his position. The next morning he left his camp at Mount Pleasant and marched out and crossed the Ingogo river with 270 men, started up the Ingogo heights, and there fought a battle which lasted from noon till nightfall.
The Ingogo River, which rises near the Pass, is flanked on its right bank by Van Wyk's Hill, which commands the eastern approach to the Pass, and on its left bank by Spitz Kop, a detached hill of the main range. Inkwelo had been held for some days by a portion of Clery's Division.
"I found the Englishmen supple as a tanned skin. They will give up their twelve prisoners for our four. The men are to be in by ten to-morrow. I told their commandant about Laing's Nek and Ingogo, and he would not believe me. He thought I lied like himself. They are getting hungry there now. I saw a Hottentot I knew, and he told me that their bones were beginning to show."
Of the mounted men, 17 were killed and wounded; of the 58th, 73 were killed and 100 wounded. The result was absolute defeat of the British forces. The number of Boers engaged is not known, but the force behind the Nek consisted of several thousands, and no doubt a fair proportion engaged in the fight. On February 8 General Colley made a demonstration in force on the Ingogo Heights.
Ingogo has been called a drawn battle. Bronkhorst Spruit was such as it was. At Laing's Nek and Majuba the Boers beat us, as Mr. Carter fairly puts it, 'when they were on the top of the hill and we were at the bottom, and when we were on the top of the hill and they were at the bottom. The narrative of these events is about as humiliating a one as an Englishman can read.
Buller had taken Botha's Pass with three infantry and two cavalry brigades; and with these he made for his next objective, the town of Volksrust in the Transvaal, a few miles north of Laing's Nek, which Clery at Ingogo was watching from the south. Lyttelton was posted on the left bank of the Buffalo watching the right flank of the advance.
Ingogo may be called a drawn battle, though our loss was more heavy than that of the enemy. Finally came the defeat of Majuba Hill, where four hundred infantry upon a mountain were defeated and driven off by a swarm of sharpshooters who advanced under the cover of boulders.
Of his staff Officers Major Essex now alone survived, his usual good fortune having carried him safe through the battle of Ingogo. What makes his repeated escapes the more remarkable is that he was generally to be found in the heaviest firing.
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