The news from the Cape is of a mixed character.
General Clarke, in command of 1,600 volunteers, 1,000 of whom were mounted, reached Mafeteng on the 19th inet. The Basutos besieging the town made a desperate resistance to his attack, and only retired after a long fight, in which they killed twenty- six men and wounded " ten" others, a curious inversion of the ordinary proportions. They themselves are believed to have lost 300 men, and no official account of the battle had, np to Wednesday, been received from General Clarke, though the Cape Government in the latest telegram mention a rumour of heavy losses. It seems clear that he was able to relieve Mafeteng, but clear also that the Basutos were daring enough to face him in the plain, and able to retire with comparatively little loss. A force of 1,600 men, 1,000 of them mounted Europeans, is at the Cape quite an army, and the conduct of the Basutos in -encountering it without fortifications shows a much increased confidence in themselves. Maseru has still to be relieved, and then the real work, the punishment of the Basntos behind their fortified positions, must be begun, and may last, as the attack on Morosi did, for six months.
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