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Updated: May 2, 2025
He proposed to leave the Kimberley line at some point between the Orange River and the Modder River, and to march in a S.E. direction on the Bloemfontein line.
We ran down to Orange River with our first load of wounded men, and just as we were crossing the sappers' pontoon bridge over the Modder a trolly or small waggon broke loose and rushing down the incline in front met our engine and was broken into matchwood.
Kimberley, however, appeared able to take care of itself for a few weeks, and Methuen halted for twelve days at Modder River in order to receive supplies and reinforcements, and to strengthen his slender and vulnerable line of communication with the south. He still believed that the Boers would make their next stand at Spytfontein. The Boers remained but a few days at Jacobsdaal.
It was assumed that they had been subject to the disintegration which obliterated the Modder River commandos; but a small reconnoitring column, detached under Pilcher by French from Thabanchu, found itself in presence of a force which outnumbered it thirty times, and was recalled.
All the way from Modder to Bloemfontein was strewn with the bodies of horses; if all other marks had been gone, these melancholy quarter-mile posts would have guided you unerringly. It was night as a rule before the column reached its camp, and there were some gorgeous pictures in the great outspanning commotion seen through dust clouds and the red sunset, and by light of many camp fires.
Reckoning upon this, he first intended, taking five days' rations, to make a circuit eastward by way of Jacobsdaal, crossing the Modder higher up, and coming in upon Spytfontein from that direction. The railroad, protected by earthworks, was to be left under guard of one or two thousand men.
The country round De Aar was full of Dutchmen, who were, with scarcely an exception, thoroughly in sympathy with the enemy, and throughout the campaign, at Modder River, Stormberg, the Tugela, and even inside Ladysmith and Mafeking spies have been repeatedly captured and shot. Some of the attempts by civilians to get through De Aar without adequate authorisation were quite amusing.
The enemy, who held the hills beyond, allowed Hamilton's force to come right down to the Modder before they opened fire from three guns. I myself saw at least forty shells, all of which burst, fall among the ranks of the mounted infantry, who retired at a contemptuous walk.
Dundee and Elandslaagte, like Lord Methuen's fights on the Modder River, added lustre to our army, by showing what British soldiers can do in assaulting positions against the terrific fire from modern magazine rifles, but it cannot be said that we have profited by them while our enemies are able to keep us here cut off from all communications except by heliograph or search-light signals, and have yet force enough to interpose a formidable line of resistance between Ladysmith and Sir Redvers Buller's column.
Together they ran him across the Riet River and north to Petrusburg, until they gave it up as hopeless upon finding that, with only fifty followers, he had crossed the Modder River at Abram's Kraal. There they abandoned the chase and fell back upon Bloemfontein to refit and prepare for a fresh effort to run down their elusive enemy.
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