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On October 24th a party of cavalry details belonging to many regiments were snapped up in an ambuscade. On the next day Jacobsdal was attacked, with considerable loss to the British. The place was entered in the night, and the enemy occupied the houses which surrounded the square.
They passed Bluewater's Drift at two in the morning, and were at Van Hayden's farm at half-past. At three they left the Modder River far behind them, and at a quarter past four they swept down the main street of the little township of Jacobsdal, their horses weak and weary and all mottled with foam. There was a police patrol in the street. "Has any one passed?" cried the sergeant.
"I should have to report myself at the office, sir," said the trooper. "Jump on to his horse, sergeant," cried Ezra. "He can take yours to report himself on. Now then you and I at least are bound to come up with them. Forward! gallop!" And they started off once more on their wild career, rousing the quiet burghers of Jacobsdal by the wild turmoil of their hoofs.
I have a choking in the throat, but I dare say you can hear what I am driving at. You met a man riding towards Jacobsdal, did you not?" Ezra nodded sullenly. "You didn't speak to him? Too busy trying to catch yours truly, eh? Will you have your stones back, for they are in the bag by my side, but they'll not be very much good to you. The little spec won't come off this time.
If at any time during the last ten weeks Methuen had contained him in front with a thin line of riflemen with machine guns, and had thrown the rest of his force on Jacobsdal and the east, he would probably have attained the same result.
They have a strong laager at Jacobsdal on the Reit, and have pushed west and south of that, where, from the kopjes about Zoutspan and Ramdam, they threaten our lines of communication.
In the afternoon they rested at Jacobsdal, another dusty, dreary, comfortless place, consisting of about five and twenty bankrupt houses scattered in bare clumps over a scorched-up desert. Then on again next day, over a drearier and ever drearier expanse of landscape. It was ghastly. It was horrible. At last, on the top of a dismal hill range, looking down on a deep dale, the driver halted.
THORNHILL FARM, January 30, 1900. On the eastern or Jacobsdal side the country is all a plain, dull and monotonous like a huge prairie, with no shade from the heat or shelter from the thunderstorms. On the western side it is very different. Great hills run roughly parallel to the river course, but leave a wide plain between themselves and it.
After my men had gone northwards, those burghers of Hoopstad, Jacobsdal, Fauresmith, Philippolis, Bethulie, Smithfield, Rouxville, Wepener, Bloemfontein and the southern part of Ladybrand, who had laid down their arms and remained at home between the beginning of March and the end of May, were left undisturbed by Lord Roberts so far as their private liberty was concerned.
I had appointed Judge Hertzog as a second Vice-Commander-in-Chief, to carry out the same work in the districts of Fauresmith, Philippolis and Jacobsdal. The latter was the man who, when the burghers from Fauresmith, even before the taking of Bloemfontein, had remained behind, broke through with seventy or eighty troops.
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