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Updated: May 2, 2025
"Well then, you must allow us to help him as well," replied the Major. "How far are we now from the Modder River?" "About forty miles, I should think, and we had better push on as fast as we can; for although the river will contain water, the pools in the desert between us and the river will soon be dried up.
This was something like a block, so Mr. Amery, of the Times, and I, resolved to ride over to Jacobsdaal and see if we could get any news. We crossed the Riet and Modder drifts, and passed over the island where the shells and bullets had been singing so shrilly on the day of the big fight. When we passed the birds were singing instead, sending down with the cooing pigeons a chorus from the trees.
Nearly all day the heliograph was flashing to us from that far-off hill. There is some suspicion that the Boers are working it as a decoy. We lost three copies of our code at Dundee, and it is significant that it was a runner brought the good news of Methuen's successes on Modder River to-night.
I had made a large map upon the wall and followed the course of the war as far as possible by making squares of red and green paper to represent the various columns. I said: 'What about Methuen? He has beaten you at Belmont. Now he should be across the Modder. In a few days he will relieve Kimberley. De Souza shrugged his shoulders. Long, dull, and profitless were the days.
Methuen was established at Modder River; Mafeking and Kimberley were holding out, and the latter at least seemed to be in no immediate danger; French was in a good position before Colesberg; Gatacre was maintaining himself without difficulty at Sterkstroom; the garrison at Ladysmith, after sixteen hours' fighting, had recently warded off a determined attack; the disaffected districts in the Cape Colony had not risen; and the despondent Buller, quickened by reinforcements and stimulated by the approach of the Dunottar Castle, was about to make another attempt to relieve Ladysmith.
One of the little pictures I shall remember belonging to Modder camp is the sight of the soldiers at early mass. You can picture to yourself a wide, flat dusty plain held in the bent arm of the river, with not a tree or bush on it; flat as a table, ankle-deep in grey dust, and with a glaring, blazing sun looking down on it.
The Pietermaritzburg Y.M.C.A., for instance, provided two correspondence tents, which were of great service to the troops. We have the report of No. 1 tent before us. From December to April this tent was pitched successively at Chievely, Frere, Springfield, Spearman's, Zwart Kopjes, beyond Colenso, outside Ladysmith, Modder Spruit, and finally at Orange River Junction.
Between the struggle at Modder River and the publication of its result there had been no interval to speak of. The fight of Belmont had occasioned no departure from the exercise of the "new diplomacy." We had heard of the collision and of the victory at Graspan almost simultaneously. But we were not yet acquainted with the sequel to the clash at Magersfontein; it was a solemn secret.
In his telegram their line is described as extending four miles north and eleven miles south of the Modder, a length which evidently required a pretty large force to man it. Its extremities, however, received no protection from natural obstacles of ground, and on the 7th of March French's Cavalry Division, passing south, turned their left flank.
And similarly on the other side, of the very large number of guns employed at the fight on the Modder, at Magersfontein, and in the siege of Kimberley the whole were, with the exception of a few pieces captured when Cronje was surrounded, withdrawn in spite of the hurried evacuation of their position, a feat almost unparalleled even in an army accompanied only by field-artillery, and extraordinary indeed in the case of works mounting heavy siege-guns.
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