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Updated: June 2, 2025
Whether this explanation be true or no, there are in connection therewith two somewhat significant points: one was that some days later a German, masquerading as a British staff-officer, was undoubtedly captured, and paid the customary penalty; the other was that after we had trekked for perhaps a couple of hours in a westerly direction, we turned sharply to the left and continued almost due south, at right angles to our previous route.
Again I trekked through the better part of the night, due north, and with no fear of missing the water, for it was a wide sheet that the kopje had shown me almost a lake it appeared to be. Towards morning the horses were so exhausted that I could scarcely urge them forward, and I myself but stumbled doggedly on, kept alive solely by the knowledge that soon now I should drink.
And so we trekked on through the sunrise, through the burning mid-day and glowing sunsets, steering by the sun and making our own road; now through tambouki grass higher than the oxen, and now through dense bush, till at length, one day, we said good-bye to the Olifants' just where the Elands' River flows into it, and turned our faces eastward.
The first was a hard-fought skirmish in which some of Elliot's horsemen were engaged upon June 6th. His column had trekked during the month of May from Kroonstad to Harrismith, and then turning north found itself upon that date near the hamlet of Reitz. Major Sladen with 200 Mounted Infantry, when detached from the main body, came upon the track of a Boer convoy and ran it down.
They had discovered the dead ground, and under the mutually supporting fire of their guns, which had kept us to our trenches, had all crossed the drift and trekked south. True, we were not captured, and had very few losses, and had severely mauled the enemy, but they had crossed the drift.
We were two thousand horsemen, and our vehicles, carts, ox-and mule-waggons formed a procession fully six miles long. When we trekked out of the nek strict orders were given that there was to be no loud talking and no matches struck. This latter was especially hard on such a crowd of inveterate smokers.
"Nonsense, mother," answered Rachel. "We have never trekked here, so how could you?" "I can't say, love, but I have. I remember that cliff and the waterfall; yes, and those three trees, and the buck standing under them." "One often feels like that, about having seen places, I mean, mother, but of course it is all nonsense, because it is impossible, unless one dreams of them first."
After resting for a fortnight in the northern parts of Zululand, to give time to our wayworn oxen to get some flesh on their bones in the warm bushveld where grass was plentiful even in the dry season, we trekked forward by a route known to Hans and myself. Indeed it was the same which we had followed on our journey from Mazituland after our expedition in search for the Holy Flower.
Then, about two o'clock in the afternoon, we inspanned the oxen and trekked in a north-easterly direction, with the range of hills cut through by the curious gorge about a quarter of a mile on our left and the Drakensberg range of mountains towering aloft on our right some fifty miles distant.
De Wet then trekked towards Bethlehem, halting at Kaffir Kop, where, nine days later, he foiled a third Elliott drive by promptly dispersing his burghers, who soon reassembled on a range of hills beyond Bethlehem. Elliott's units then returned to their respective bases to refit.
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