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Updated: June 6, 2025
He recruited his force mainly from the loyalists of South Africa, though a body named Methuen's Horse went out from these islands. In all it numbered nearly 5000 men. Moving quickly from the Orange River through Griqualand West, he reached the banks of the Vaal at Barkly Camp by January 22, 1885, that is, only six weeks after his arrival at Cape Town.
But I cannot understand why the force in our rear, which had arrived at Parijs the previous evening, remained there overnight, nor why, when they did move on the following morning, they marched to Lindequesdrift, eight miles up the Vaal River, and not, as might well have been expected, to Vanvurenskloof.
The masterly retreat of the Boer forces northward along the railway and across the Vaal River, and the many skirmishes and battles with which Botha harassed the enemy's advance, were mere incidents in the Commandant-General's work of those trying days.
For the same reason the two brigades of cavalry had remained inactive. During the night the Boers set fire to the grass on Vaal Krantz, and by the assistance of the light kept up a shell and Maxim fire upon the troops holding it. By morning they had brought up one of their big hundred-pound Creusot guns on to Doornkloof, and it added its roar to the chaos of other sounds.
Many plans were suggested, but there was a general consensus of opinion that it was impossible to advance further along this line. At eleven at night Hildyard's Brigade was withdrawn from Vaal Krantz, evacuating the position in good order, and carrying with them their wounded, whom till dark it had been impossible to collect.
Owen, Her Majesty's Assistant-Commissioners for the settling and adjusting of the affairs of the eastern and north-eastern boundaries of the Colony of the Cape of Good Hope on the one part, and a deputation representative of the emigrant farmers north of the Vaal River on the other.
De la Rey was a Transvaal general, and when the retreat from Bloemfontein was made he harassed the enemy greatly, but was finally compelled to cross the Vaal into his own country, where he continued to fight under Commandant-General Botha.
The original intention was that guns should be taken up on to Vaal Krantz, and that with their assistance a strong force would wheel round and take Doornkloof in the rear; but owing to the discovery that the former hill was dominated from several points, it was found impracticable to carry the plan into execution.
"An' you'd 'ave bin joined by a Dutch dodger and settled down on a Vaal sheep-farm, if the order 'adn't come 'ummin' along the wire from 'Eadquarters that said, 'Jane 'Arris, you're to 'ave this bloke, and no other. Till Death do you part. Everlasting Amen!" There was so strong a flavour of Church about the final sentence that Mrs. Keyse could not keep admiration out of her eyes.
It has been included in the programmes of reciters from the Murrumbidgee to the Vaal, from John O'Groat's to Land's End, and is now being published as a separate volume in England and America. It has been dramatised several times, and is more alive to-day than it was when it was published nearly twenty years ago. Almost the same may be said of The Three Commandments in the Vulgar Tongue.
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