ld
train-bands whose descendants they are. Our loss was two killed and
twenty wounded, and we found ourselves for the first time firmly
established in one of the enemy's towns. In the excellent German
hospital were thirty or forty of our wounded.

On the afternoon of Thursday, February 15th, our cavalry, having left
Klip Drift in the morning, were pushing hard for Kimberley. At Klip
Drift was Kelly-Kenny's 6th Division. South of Klip Drift at Wegdraai
was Colvile's 9th Division, while the 7th Division was approaching
Jacobsdal. Altogether the British forces were extended over a line of
forty miles. The same evening saw the relief of Kimberley and the taking
of Jacobsdal, but it also saw the capture of one of our convoys by the
Boers, a dashing exploit which struck us upon what was undoubtedly our
vulnerable point.

It has never been cleared up whence the force of Boers came which
appeared upon our rear on that occasion. It seems to have been the same
body which had already had a skirmish with Hannay's Mounted Infantry
as they went up from Orange River to join the rendezvous at Ramdam.
The balance of evidence is that they had not come from Colesberg or any
distant point, but that they were a force under the command of Piet De
Wet, the younger of two famous brothers. Descending to Waterval Drift,
the ford over the Riet, they occupied a line of kopjes, which ought, one
would have imagined, to have been carefully guarded by us, and opened
a brisk fire from rifles and guns upon the convoy as it ascended the
northern bank of the river. Numbers of bullocks were soon shot down,
and the removal of the hundred and eighty wagons made impossible. The
convoy, which contained forage and provisions, had no guard of its own,
but the drift was held by Colonel Ridley with one company of Gordons
and one hundred and fifty mounted infantry without artillery, which
certainly seems an inadequate force to secure the most vital and
vulnerable spot in the line of communications of an army of forty
thousand men. The Boers numbered at the first some five or six hundred
men, but their position was such that they could not be attacked. On the
other hand they were not strong enough to leave their shelter in order
to drive in the British guard, who, lying in extended order between the
wagons and the assailants, were keeping up a steady and effective fire.
Captain Head, of the East Lancashire Regiment, a fine natural soldier,
commanded the British fi