ame direction.

I mounted a horse and rode up a kopje to see if I could see
anything that might be taking place. The kopje was about 1,000 to
1,200 yards from my laager. I was riding a chestnut horse. I went
to the kopje alone, but a man by the name of Michael Coetzee, whom
I intend to call as a witness, was on the kopje on duty as a
sentinel. I remained there a considerable time. I saw cannon-firing
on a little ridge on the Colony side of the river. I heard
rifle-fire while I was on the kopje. I returned to the laager. The
firing was in the direction of the laager. When I got back to the
laager Commandant Wessels was there, off-saddled. After I arrived
at the camp I spoke to him about the firing I had heard. I knew
that some of the farmer's cattle were being brought in for the
purpose of slaughtering, and I asked Wessels why they fired so many
shots at the animals, and he replied that a couple of Kaffirs had
been shot. I was chaffing Wessels when I asked him why they fired
so many shots at the animals. When I was on the kopje I certainly
did not know that Wessels had taken natives prisoner. I did not see
these natives after they had been shot. I do not know the boy Jan
Louw. I did not speak to him that day, nor to any other native. The
Wessels in question is the Commandant Louis Wessels, who passed
into the Colony from the Orange River Colony, and I met him three
or four days before I crossed. The day after our meeting we had a
skirmish with the British. Wessels and I got separated. The
following day we met again on the farm of Van der Keever. He was
not under my command in the Colony, nor in the Orange River Colony.
I had about between seventy and eighty men when I crossed the
river, and Wessels had between thirty and forty men. I had a few
natives shot in the Orange River Colony prior to my crossing into
the Colony in the first instance. These were tried by Captain
Scheepers, Captain Fouche, and Captain Smit and myself, also Judge
Hugo. The papers were sent to Assistant Chief Commandant Fourie,
and the sentences were approved of by him. That was the only case
of natives having been shot by me.

_Prosecutor's Address._

(Captain L. Daine.)

"As regards the first charge, the natives Jafta and Solomon and the
scouts McCabe and Maasdor