There Have
Been Battles With 10,000 British Troops Hotly Engaged In Which The
Boer Losses Have Not Been So Great As In This Obscure Conflict
Against An Isolated Post.
When at last, baffled and disheartened,
they drew off with the waning light, it is said that no fewer than
a hundred of their dead and two hundred of their wounded attested
the severity of the fight.
So strange are the conditions of South
African warfare that this loss, which would have hardly made a
skirmish memorable in the slogging days of the Peninsula, was one
of the most severe blows which the burghers had sustained in the
course of a two years' warfare against a large and aggressive army.
There is a conflict of evidence as to the exact figures, but at
least they were sufficient to beat the Boer army back and to change
their plan of campaign.
Whilst this prolonged contest had raged round Fort Itala, a similar
attack upon a smaller scale was being made upon Fort Prospect, some
fifteen miles to the eastward. This small post was held by a
handful of Durham Artillery Militia and of Dorsets. The attack was
delivered by Grobler with several hundred burghers, but it made no
advance although it was pushed with great vigour, and repeated many
times in the course of the day. Captain Rowley, who was in command,
handled his men with such judgment that one killed and eight
wounded represented his casualties during a long day's fighting.
Here again the Boer losses were in proportion to the resolution of
their attack, and are said to have amounted to sixty killed and
wounded.
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