The Story Of These Instructive And Humiliating Episodes Will
Be Told In Their Order.
The energy and skill of the guerilla chief
challenge our admiration, and the score of his successes would be
amusing were it not that the points of the game are marked by the
lives of British soldiers.
General Buller had spent the latter half of May in making his way
from Ladysmith to Laing's Nek, and the beginning of June found him
with twenty thousand men in front of that difficult position. Some
talk of a surrender had arisen, and Christian Botha, who commanded
the Boers, succeeded in gaining several days' armistice, which
ended in nothing. The Transvaal forces at this point were not more
than a few thousand in number, but their position was so formidable
that it was a serious task to turn them out. Van Wyk's Hill,
however, had been left unguarded, and as its possession would give
the British the command of Botha's Pass, its unopposed capture by
the South African Light Horse was an event of great importance.
With guns upon this eminence the infantry were able, on June 8th,
to attack and to carry with little loss the rest of the high
ground, and so to get the Pass into their complete possession.
Botha fired the grass behind him, and withdrew sullenly to the
north. On the 9th and 10th the convoys were passed over the Pass,
and on the 11th the main body of the army followed them.
The operations were now being conducted in that extremely acute
angle of Natal which runs up between the Transvaal and the Orange
Free State.
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