Those Were His Great Days, The Days
When He Hardened His Heart Against Their Appeals For Justice And
Looked Beyond His Own Borders To His Kinsmen In The Hope Of A South
Africa Which Should Be All His Own.
And now what had come of it
all?
A handful of faithful attendants, and a fugitive old man,
clutching in his flight at his papers and his moneybags. The last
of the old-world Puritans, he departed poring over his well-thumbed
Bible, and proclaiming that the troubles of his country arose, not
from his own narrow and corrupt administration, but from some
departure on the part of his fellow burghers from the stricter
tenets of the dopper sect. So Paul Kruger passed away from the
country which he had loved and ruined.
Whilst the main army of Botha had been hustled out of their
position at Machadodorp and scattered at Lydenburg and at
Barberton, a number of other isolated events had occurred at
different points of the seat of war, each of which deserves some
mention. The chief of these was a sudden revival of the war in the
Orange River Colony, where the band of Olivier was still wandering
in the north-eastern districts. Hunter, moving northwards after the
capitulation of Prinsloo at Fouriesburg, came into contact on
August 15th with this force near Heilbron, and had forty
casualties, mainly of the Highland Light Infantry, in a brisk
engagement. For a time the British seemed to have completely lost
touch with Olivier, who suddenly on August 24th struck at a small
detachment consisting almost entirely of Queenstown Rifle
Volunteers under Colonel Ridley, who were reconnoitring near
Winburg.
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