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Updated: June 6, 2025
"We have been discussing the point, Major Henderson, as to whether it will not be better to go round in a vessel to Algoa Bay, complete our equipment there, and make that our starting-place." "If you do, you will save a long journey by land, and find yourself not very far from what I understand are the best of hunting-grounds, near to the country of the Vaal River."
Then, after a last and frightful encounter with her sodden boots, that seemed to take almost as much out of her as her roll at the bottom of the Vaal, Jess rose and walked back to the spot where she had left John an hour before.
The advance of Lord Roberts with sixty thousand men to the Vaal River must open to Sir Redvers Buller the passes of the Drakensberg range from Van Reenen's to Lang's Nek, and between the two forces the Boer army must be crushed.
It would be ridiculous for us to renew the sort of fighting we have been doing when the enemy are sure to clear out when Roberts crosses the Vaal, and Natal be thus freed without any further loss of life. Possibly the troops may not be sent round by sea, but will remain here until Roberts gets as far as Kroonstadt.
This attack was to be covered on its right by the guns already specified on Swartkop and the 64th Field Battery, and prepared by the six artillery batteries employed in the demonstration, which were to withdraw one by one at intervals of ten minutes, cross No. 2 pontoon bridge, and take up new positions opposite to the Vaal Krantz ridge.
A band of about thirty Transvaalers, mostly from Potchefstroom, who had been attached to De Wet for some time, now decided to go on ahead and join Liebenberg's commando, near their native town. As De Wet had no intention of moving forward just yet, I joined my brother Transvaalers. Bidding adieu to our Free State comrades, we crossed the Vaal.
These, starting on an extended front which ran from near Johannesburg to within a few miles of Heilbron with their centre astride the Vaal and their right touching the Natal Railway, would advance S.E. to near Vrede; then wheeling to the right march southwards with their left on the Drakensberg; finally, in conjunction with Elliott, pushing the fugitives on to the eastern section of the Harrismith blockhouse line.
When he reached the Vaal he was careful to throw the burghers' wagons across the river first of all, knowing that their unwillingness to leave the Free State would be overcome by their greater reluctance to sever themselves from their oxen and stuff.
Here they were left pretty much to themselves, until the year 1848, when Sir Harry Smith proclaimed the extension of the Queen's supremacy over the whole of the territory situated between the Orange and Vaal Rivers; but, as has been already said, it was not until March of last year that this acquisition was finally sanctioned, and the new colony established by an act of the imperial government.
Methuen had been for some time in occupation of the Boshof district, where he was in a position to threaten Kroonstad as well as the commandos at the Vaal bridge at Fourteen Streams between Kimberley and Mafeking. The relief of the latter was to be undertaken by a flying column under Mahon supported by Hunter's division. On May 3 Lord Roberts left Bloemfontein for the north.
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