t made on the occasion
of the capture of Prinsloo. But for British magnanimity a drumhead
court-martial should have taken the place of the hospitality of the
Ceylon planters.

On September 2nd another commando of Free State Boers under Fourie
emerged from the mountain country on the Basuto border, and fell upon
Ladybrand, which was held by a feeble garrison consisting of one company
of the Worcester regiment and forty-three men of the Wiltshire Yeomanry.
The Boers, who had several guns with them, appear to have been the same
force which had been repulsed at Winburg. Major White, a gallant marine,
whose fighting qualities do not seem to have deteriorated with his
distance from salt water, had arranged his defences upon a hill, after
the Wepener model, and held his own most stoutly. So great was the
disparity of the forces that for days acute anxiety was felt lest
another of those humiliating surrenders should interrupt the record of
victories, and encourage the Boers to further resistance. The point was
distant, and it was some time before relief could reach them. But
the dusky chiefs, who from their native mountains looked down on the
military drama which was played so close to their frontier, were
again, as on the Jammersberg, to see the Boer attack beaten back by the
constancy of the British defence. The thin line of soldiers, 150 of them
covering a mile and a half of ground, endured a heavy shell and rifle
fire with unshaken resolution, repulsed every attempt of the burghers,
and held the flag flying until relieved by the forces under White and
Bruce Hamilton. In this march to the relief Hamilton's infantry covered
eighty miles in four and a half days. Lean and hard, inured to warfare,
and far from every temptation of wine or women, the British troops
at this stage of the campaign were in such training, and marched so
splendidly, that the infantry was often very little slower than
the cavalry. Methuen's fine performance in pursuit of De Wet, where
Douglas's infantry did sixty-six miles in seventy-five hours, the City
Imperial Volunteers covering 224 miles in fourteen days, with a single
forced march of thirty miles in seventeen hours, the Shropshires
forty-three miles in thirty-two hours, the forty-five miles in
twenty-five hours of the Essex Regiment, Bruce Hamilton's march
recorded above, and many other fine efforts serve to show the spirit and
endurance of the troops.

In spite of the defeat at Winburg and the r