stance,
and entailed a loss of forty or fifty killed and wounded; but it soon
became evident that the punishment which they had received at Bergendal
had taken the fight out of the Boers, and that this formidable position
was to be abandoned as the others had been. On the 28th the burghers
were retreating, and Machadodorp, where Kruger had sat so long in his
railway carriage, protesting that he would eventually move west and not
east, was occupied by Buller. French, moving on a more northerly route,
entered Watervalonder with his cavalry upon the same date, driving a
small Boer force before him. Amid rain and mist the British columns
were pushing rapidly forwards, but still the burghers held together, and
still their artillery was uncaptured. The retirement was swift, but it
was not yet a rout.

On the 30th the British cavalry were within touch of Nooitgedacht, and
saw a glad sight in a long trail of ragged men who were hurrying in
their direction along the railway line. They were the British prisoners,
eighteen hundred in number, half of whom had been brought from Waterval
when Pretoria was captured, while the other half represented the men who
had been sent from the south by De Wet, or from the west by De la
Rey. Much allowance must be made for the treatment of prisoners by a
belligerent who is himself short of food, but nothing can excuse the
harshness which the Boers showed to the Colonials who fell into their
power, or the callous neglect of the sick prisoners at Waterval. It is
a humiliating but an interesting fact that from first to last no fewer
than seven thousand of our men passed into their power, all of whom were
now recovered save some sixty officers, who had been carried off by them
in their flight.

On September 1st Lord Roberts showed his sense of the decisive nature
of these recent operations by publishing the proclamation which had been
issued as early as July 4th, by which the Transvaal became a portion of
the British Empire. On the same day General Buller, who had ceased to
advance to the east and retraced his steps as far as Helvetia, began his
northerly movement in the direction of Lydenburg, which is nearly fifty
miles to the north of the railway line. On that date his force made a
march of fourteen miles, which brought them over the Crocodile River to
Badfontein. Here, on September 2nd, Buller found that the indomitable
Botha was still turning back upon him, for he was faced by so heavy
a shell