'We took some excellent horses and a few necessary garments, for a three days' journey through the thorns and bush that border the Wet River had reduced us to absolute rags.
'These negotiations and a brief rest occupied Monday and Tuesday. We started on Wednesday at one o'clock, and knowing the road to be safe, we passed through Bultfontein, accomplishing our return journey in a day and a half.
'At Hoopstad we were told that when the Villebois contingent had passed through, all had remarked the gaiety of the General, who had kept the piano going all the evening, and the depression of Breda.'
These last words gave a fresh poignancy to our regrets. Just as the General had been the ideal of the brilliant and revered leader, so had Breda been the ideal of the devoted friend, the good comrade, the man of sound judgment and charming amenities.
* * * * *
From this report we gathered certain facts hard to explain. We group them here together with others which reached us from a different source.
1. Wrangel and his men, who left Brandfort on the evening of the 9th, arrived at Driefontein at noon on the 13th--in four nights and three and a half days. The General, under the conduct of his Afrikander guide, took twelve nights and eleven days (from the evening of March 24 to the morning of April 5) to cover an equivalent distance. Now, the length and irregularity of this march were utterly irreconcilable with the object the General had in view, with the dates he had himself fixed, and with the length and severity of the distances he was in the habit of exacting from his men.
2. Numerous desertions took place among the Dutch and the Afrikanders, men who spoke the same language.
3. Finally, and this is a very serious coincidence, a whole English brigade, which retired as soon as it had made the coup determined on, was lying in wait for the contingent, the itinerary of which had been kept so strictly secret that only the guide could have known it exactly.
This fact was confirmed by the following statement made to me by an English officer present at the engagement. The General, finding himself surrounded at daybreak, after having marched all night, took up a position on a kopje near the farm of Driefontein. Artillery fire began almost immediately, opened by Battery No. 4 of the Royal Field Artillery.