Thence,
having spent some days in drawing in his scattered detachments and
in mending the railway, he pushed forward on March 12th to
Burghersdorp, and thence on the 13th to Olive Siding, to the south
of the Bethulie Bridge.
There are two bridges which span the broad muddy Orange River,
thick with the washings of the Basutoland mountains. One of these
is the magnificent high railway bridge, already blown to ruins by
the retreating Boers. Dead men or shattered horses do not give a
more vivid impression of the unrelenting brutality of war than the
sight of a structure, so graceful and so essential, blown into a
huge heap of twisted girders and broken piers. Half a mile to the
west is the road bridge, broad and old-fashioned. The only hope of
preserving some mode of crossing the difficult river lay in the
chance that the troops might anticipate the Boers who were about to
destroy this bridge.
In this they were singularly favoured by fortune. On the arrival of
a small party of scouts and of the Cape Police under Major
Nolan-Neylan at the end of the bridge it was found that all was
ready to blow it up, the mine sunk, the detonator fixed, and the
wire laid.
