The South African news during the week has been excel-
lent. Its main feature has been the advance of the troops im- mediately under General Buller—Lord Roberts has, however, been in the field throughout and in general command—upon the Delagoa Railway in the neighbourhood of Machadodorp. The Boers had fortified certain defiles and heights in this region with trenches and some fifty guns, many of them of high calibre, and it was believed that they intended to make a final stand. On Sunday last our troops were ordered to turn them out of their position. In order to do this General French moved to the north, while General Lyttelton's division assaulted the ridges near Dalmanntha. In both cases the attack was "stubbornly opposed "—our casualties, however, were only thirty-seven and twenty-six— and on the Sunday little progress was made. On the Monday, however, we captured some kopjes near Bergendal Farm which proved to be the centre of the Boer position. Two infantry battalions were engaged in this attack, the Rifle Brigade and the Inniskilling Fusiliers, and magnificently they did their work, driving out the Johannesburg Police, who had stuck to their position with great courage under a terrible artillery fire. Nineteen prisoners and a porn-porn were taken, and the Boers left twenty dead.
Previous page
