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Brushing aside the inadequate force opposing him, French passed on, and about 7 P.M. entered the place, joining hands with the long besieged. Kimberley was relieved, and the British cavalry established on Cronje's rear. Lord Roberts himself was at Jacobsdal, whence his telegrams were dated on the 16th and 17th. Kitchener remained at Klip Drift.
About nine o'clock in the morning Jacobsdal was reached. In England it would be called a village, for it had only seven hundred inhabitants; but it was quite an important town in those parts. Here a halt was called and a few hours' rest permitted. Mr. Lowry climbed into a captured Boer ambulance, and found lying on the floor of it a Dutch Reformed minister, the Rev.
The district of Boshof: the men under Commandant J.N. Jacobsz, P. Erasmus and H. Theunissen. All of these were under Vice-Commander-in-Chief C.C.J. Badenhorst. The district of Philippolis: the men under Commandants Munnik and Hertzog. Sub-district of Fauresmith: the men under Commandant Charles Nieuwouwdt. Sub-district of Jacobsdal: the men under Commandant Hendrik Pretorius.
Again and again the Boers are described in the Press as "canting hypocrites" or their thanksgivings to God as "sanctimonious". What right have we as Christians to bring such wholesale charges against our Christian enemies? Several thousand burghers advanced from Jacobsdal to reinforce Cronje, and as it marched the entire force sang the Old Hundredth in unison.
All kinds of rumours are afloat, mostly to the effect that the Boers are circling round behind us, via Douglas on the west and Jacobsdal on the east, and mean cutting our communications. However, as I have long since found out, a camp is a hot-bed of lies. Nothing positive is known, for every one is kept in careful ignorance of everything that is going on.
On Monday French with his cavalry brigade seized a drift or ford across the Riet ten or a dozen miles above Jacobsdal, and the two infantry divisions were so close behind him that on Tuesday Lord Roberts could report them both encamped beyond the river.
Both of us, I am glad to be able to tell you, rose to the occasion, and as we looked across the bubbles, no foolish chaff or laughter marred the moment. I wrote you my last letter from old Modder just as we were leaving to catch French. Marching light and fast, we got up with him on the night of the 15th at the Klip Drift on the Modder, northeast of Jacobsdal.
The same evening saw the relief of Kimberley and the taking of Jacobsdal, but it also saw the capture of one of our convoys by the Boers, a dashing exploit which struck us upon what was undoubtedly our vulnerable point. It has never been cleared up whence the force of Boers came which appeared upon our rear on that occasion.
A strong reconnaissance of ours the other day (January 9th) in the direction of Jacobsdal was a very dignified and solemn exhibition. Our guns rumbled forward with their eight-horse teams across the plain, while our cavalry, stretched out in open order at fifty yards apart, traversed the country in long strings that might have been seen and admired by the enemy at a distance, I daresay, of twenty miles. Chester Master took us forward on the left close to the river, where a party of the enemy, stealing up from the river-bed, tried to cut us off there were only six or eight of us and chivied us back to the main body as hard as we could go, two miles ventre
They streamed in such large numbers on this and the following days, that my highest hopes were surpassed. It is true that certain burghers had remained behind. Such was the case with the men from Fauresmith and Jacobsdal, and with a large proportion of the commandos from Philippolis, Smithfield, Wepener, and Bloemfontein.
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