AN OSTRICH FARM AT GRAAF REINET, IN THE CENTRE OF THE DISAFFECTED DISTRICT.
MOUNTAINS OF STORES AT NAAUWPOORT.
[Nov. 1899.
We see, then, that if the gravest mistakes had been made by British generals, the enemy committed yet more colossal blunders. There was nothing whatever to prevent the Boers from detaching 10,000 men from Natal in early November and sending another 5,000 south from before Kimberley, which would have been more hopelessly isolated if the rails had been broken in the vicinity of Victoria West, far to the south of De Aar, than it was when the line was cut only at Spytfontein. It is certain that their foreign advisers, and in particular Dr. Leyds, urged such a course upon the Boers. They were, one would suppose, shrewd enough to understand the immense advantages which carrying the war so far south would give them, but it may be that their armies had the weakness of all peasant forces, hastily levied and ill-compacted, and that the individual Boers shrank from going so far afield from their homes.
British withdraw from Naauwpoort and Stormberg.
The tiny British garrisons had at General Buller's order evacuated Naauwpoort and Stormberg, the first on the 2nd and the second on the 3rd of November. From Naauwpoort the British fell back to De Aar, and from Stormberg to Sterkstroom and Queenstown, the latter place only ninety miles from East London. There they remained a fortnight in hourly danger of attack, waiting for the tardy transports that conveyed the Army Corps. Meantime the Boers occupied Barkly East, Aliwal North, Jamestown, Burghersdorp and Colesberg. At Aliwal North they seized a loyal Dutch magistrate, Mr. Hugo, and made him stand upon the bridge while they were crossing, as they were fully under the impression that it had been mined. This gentleman displayed such devotion to his Queen, and such unswerving fidelity to Britain, that he had afterwards to fly for his life, leaving behind him his wife and children.
[Photo by L W. Ford, Queenstown.