With Rimington

by L. March Phillipps

So here we are, sitting or lying about, sleeping, smoking, or reading. Our camp is in a small plain, five or six miles from Fouriesberg, surrounded by ranges of great hills. Those south and east, their gaunt peaks rising, streaked with white, above the lower and nearer ones, are in Basutoland. They play an important part in our programme, for it is against that huge barrier that we are pressing the Boers. There are some rounded, turf-clad hills, but most are rocky. Sharp points and stony ridges rise up with jagged and clear-cut outlines into the sky, with gorges and valleys retreating in between, full of deep blue shade, and often horizontal bands of strata, showing like regularly built courses of white masonry along the flanks of the mountains. It is very fine, though gaunt, bare, and untenanted. We have had nothing but level veldt to march on for weeks past, and the change to the eye is a pleasant one. Nevertheless, it is a bad country for our business. To us mountain ranges are not fine scenery, but strong positions; and rocks and crags are not grand and picturesque, but merely good cover. We always serve out extra-ammunition when we come to a pretty bit of scenery.

The present position is this: We have got the Boers, a big lot of them, at any rate, into a very broken and mountainous country, a country which, though it suits their tactics and is strong for defence, is nevertheless very difficult to get out of. The way south is barred by the Basutoland border. They dare not cross that or they would have the hordes of Basutos, who are already buzzing and humming like a half-roused hive, on to them. The other passes Hunter occupies in this way: Rundle comes up from the south-west to Fouriesberg through Commando Nek. Paget and Clements march south towards the same point through Slabbert's Nek. A little farther east Hunter himself forces Retiefs Nek, while farther east still Bruce-Hamilton, helped by Macdonald, is to hold Naawpoort Nek and block the Golden Gate road. The western columns, i.e. Rundle's, Clement's, Paget's, and Hunter's, are to force a simultaneous entrance into the Fouriesberg valley, and having got the enemy's force jammed against the Basuto border, to force it to turn eastward up the rugged Caledon valley, the only two exits to which are, we hope, by this time held by Bruce-Hamilton and Macdonald. This we have now done. Now it only remains to see whether these eastern exits have been successfully occupied by our columns or not.

PLAN TO ILLUSTRATE PRINSLOO'S SURRENDER

From the moment of leaving Bethlehem, at which place we remained nearly a fortnight while the General placed his columns, we entered among the hills and fighting was continuous. Our passage to force was Relief's Nek, and, as we had expected, the Boers made a determined stand there. The ground lay in a naturally defensive position; a narrow plain among steep, almost precipitous, ranges, and in the plain, arresting further progress, an abruptly sunken valley, scooped out to a depth of a couple of hundred feet; as though, what must perhaps have happened, some sudden collapse down below had allowed the ground here to fall in. The sides are in most places precipitous, but to the north they shelve up by degrees in terraces of sloping rock which a man can easily clamber up. The first terrace is only a few feet deep, and accordingly a number of men can form here along the brink and fire across the plain, being totally concealed from the advancing troops. Moreover, the edge of this curious and sudden valley is indented and pierced with a number of little crevices and fissures in which riflemen can snugly ensconce themselves with little risk of being seen by attackers in front. This was the main Boer position. You see it departed from the general rule, and instead of occupying a hill, occupied a hollow. They are past-masters in the art of choosing ground. The adjacent heights were also held.

On the morning of the 23rd we struck our camp a few miles north of the Nek, and advanced to find out whether the enemy were in position here or not. We started before daylight. The night had been intensely cold and very wet. On the high mountains snow had fallen. The sky was heavily clouded, and about sunrise-time dense masses of mist rose and clung about the hills, sometimes closing in the view at fifty yards and then drifting off and leaving it clear again. Our scouts advanced steadily, reconnoitring hill after hill and ridge after ridge, but still there was no sound of firing, and we began to think that the enemy had abandoned the place altogether. This preliminary scouting work, poking about in the hills with a handful of men to find the enemy, always reminds me of tufting for deer in the Exmoor woods before the pack is laid on.

Then there came a few shots from our extreme right, from the hills on the right of the valley's nose, sounding very muffled and dull in the mist, and we, out on the left, advanced with the more caution. It was my chance to come upon the enemy first on this side, and as it will give you a fair notion of the usual risks of scouting, I will tell you how it happened!

I was out with my tufters on the left front, and we were drawing with all possible care the hills on that side. In front of us was a tall peak, and I sent a few men to work round it on the left while I went round the right. This hill really overlooked the Boer position. My left flankers got round and rejoined me in front. Either they must have been concealed from the Boers by the mist or have been mistaken for a party of Boers themselves, for they had passed within a few hundred yards of the edge where the enemy lay and were not fired at.

Damant, our captain, coolest and bravest of officers, now joined me, and with two or three men we pushed cautiously on towards some loose rocks, which, from the top of the rise, seemed to command a view of the valley beneath. We had advanced to within eighty yards of the rocks, in open order, when we thought we heard voices talking, and immediately afterwards some one said loudly in Dutch, "Who rides there?" And then another voice more to the right exclaimed, "Here they are!" At the same instant one caught a motion as of heads and shoulders cuddling down and adjusting themselves in a disagreeable way. There they were and no mistake, all tucked in among the rocks like wood-lice.

Our position then was a curious one, for we had actually walked quite in the open up to within speaking distance of the main Boer position, a position that was to defy our army for a day and a half.