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Updated: June 16, 2025
Nearly all the Orange Free State farmers in the Klip River division, who stay in the colony usually till October at least, have trekked, at great loss to themselves; their sheep are lambing on the road, and the lambs die or are destroyed.
After varying my trek-ox rations by catching a kind of barbel with a worm in the yellow Klip, I went again to Observation Hill, and with the greater interest because every one was saying two of the Boer camps were in flames. Of course it was a lie. The camps stood in their usual places quite undisturbed. January 22, 1900. Twelve weeks to-day since Black Monday, when our isolation really began!
On the following day General Kock and a large staff arrived at the laager, and, together with the German Corps, we trekked to Paardekop and Klip River, in the Orange Free State, where we were to occupy Botha's Pass. My convoy comprised about a hundred carts, mostly drawn by mules, and it was amusing to see the variety of provisions my worthy field-cornets had gathered together.
Upon this it depended whether they would find five hundred or five thousand waiting on the further bank. It must have been with anxious eyes that French watched his first regiment ride down to Klip Drift. If the Boers should have had notice of his coming and have transferred some of their 40-pounders, he might lose heavily before he forced the stream.
It was a pretty straggling town with its barracks, government buildings and large stores. Almost all the houses were detached and standing in their own gardens, and as these were largely wooded its appearance was very picturesque, with the Klip river, a branch of the Tugela, running through it.
The orders to the Divisions were cancelled, and before midnight on February 16 Colvile was marching out to join Kelly-Kenny in the chase. Tucker, whose Division had hardly recovered from the Waterval Drift affair, remained at Jacobsdaal. After sunset Cronje broke up his camp at Klip Kraal Drift and trekked along the right bank.
White's force, which numbered about 13,000 men, occupied a perimeter of fourteen miles on the hills and kopjes nearest to the town, and was enveloped by an outer perimeter of thirty six miles held by 23,000 Boers. The positions N.E. of the Klip River were occupied by the Transvaalers, and the opposite semi-circle by the Free Staters.
The debates in the war councils; the doubts of the subordinate commanders; the devices and stratagems, such as the attempt to dam the Klip River, and the proposal to disguise an assaulting commando in the helmets and accoutrements of the slain opponents; the abstinence of some of the leaders from the fray; the single combats on Wagon Point; the democratic organization of the Boer forces; the difficulty of keeping the burghers to their duty when the attraction of a domestic and pastoral life presented themselves in an alluring form; were not of these days nor even of the Puritan period, but belonged to a remoter age when every man was a soldier or a shepherd according to the exigences of the moment.
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.
Joubert's absence on the raid towards the south did not sensibly diminish the retaining power of the attack, and although the loss of several thousand Free State burghers who were transferred to Cronje's command on the Modder or to Delarey's at Colesberg was in part made up by a reinforcement of Transvaalers, the force sitting round Ladysmith had to assist in the defence of the line of the Tugela against Duller; yet, albeit weakened by that necessity, it was still able without much effort to pin White down to the banks of the Klip River.
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