The news from the seat of war is deeply disappointing.
To rail it serious would be to exaggerate, but it naturally pro- duces a feeling of intense aggravation to hear at this stage of the war, as we did on Friday morning, that the Boers had carried out another successful surprise, and had captured a British post and several hundred men,—making with killed and wounded about six hundred casualties. Lord Roberts's telegram from Pretoria on Thursday night states that Nitral's Nek, a post about eighteen miles from Pretoria, near the Crocodile River, and garrisoned by one squadron of the Scots Greys, two guns of 0 Battery of the Royal Horse Artillery, and five companies of the Lincolnshire Regiment, had been captured by the Boers. The enemy attacked in superior numbers at dawn, and, seizing the hills which commanded the Nek, brought a heavy converging fire to bear upon the small garrison. The fighting lasted more or less throughout the day, and reinforcements were hurried up. "Before, however, they reached the spot the garrison was overpowered. The two guns and the greater portion of the squadron of the Greys were captured owing to their horses being shot, as were also about ninety men of the Lincoln Regiment." At the same time an attack was made on the British outposts near Derdepoort, north of Pretoria, but here the attack was driven off.
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