Dr. Jameson during this period had been fighting hard. He
left Mafeking on December 29th with a little over five hundred troopers and six Maxim-guns, and marching with Extraordinary rapidity, arrived at Krngersdorp, some fifteen miles from Johannesburg, on New Year's Day. Here he found the Boers in position; but food being short and the horses exhausted, resolved to push through. He expected the Johannesbnrgers to attack the Boers in rear, and three times his troopers charged right up to enemies posted on the ridge in the teeth of a murderous fire. It was all useless, and the force retreated—still to wards Johannesburg—by an upper road. Tie Boers, who were not exhausted, and who had received a train of munitions from Johannesburg, caught the invaders with ease, stopped them again, and inflicted further loss, bring- ing up the total of killed and wounded to a third of the whole body. Dr. Jameson still refused to yield; but his men, worn out with overmarching, hunger, and thirty-six hours of battle, and with all their cartridges spent, hung out the white flag, and surrendered in a body. They have been fairly well treated, and have now been released, doubtless upon terms which have not as yet been defined in the telegrams. The Boers are full of praises for their gallantry ; but there is as yet no explanation of the forced marches, or of the neglect to carry even one day's extra supply of food. The march was a splendid feat, but one worthy of schoolboys rather than soldiers intent, as their leader believed, on an adventure which might alter the whole future of South Africa.
