nts
and absolute disaster. The camp was abandoned as it stood, and all the
stores, four hundred picketed horses, and, most serious of all, two
wagons of ammunition, fell into the hands of the victors. To have saved
all his guns, however, after the destruction of half his force by an
active enemy far superior to him in numbers and in mobility, was a feat
which goes far to condone the disaster, and to increase rather than to
impair the confidence which his troops feel in General Clements. Having
retreated for a couple of miles he turned his big gun round upon the
hill, which is called Yeomanry Hill, and opened fire upon the camp,
which was being looted by swarms of Boers. So bold a face did he present
that he was able to remain with his crippled force upon Yeomanry Hill
from about nine until four in the afternoon, and no attack was pressed
home, though he lay under both shell and rifle fire all day. At four
in the afternoon he began his retreat, which did not cease till he had
reached Rietfontein, twenty miles off, at six o'clock upon the following
morning. His weary men had been working for twenty-six hours, and
actually fighting for fourteen, but the bitterness of defeat was
alleviated by the feeling that every man, from the General downwards,
had done all that was possible, and that there was every prospect of
their having a chance before long of getting their own back.

The British losses at the battle of Nooitgedacht amounted to 60 killed,
180 wounded, and 315 prisoners, all of whom were delivered up a few days
later at Rustenburg. Of the Boer losses it is, as usual, impossible
to speak with confidence, but all the evidence points to their actual
casualties being as heavy as those of the British. There was the long
struggle at the camp in which they were heavily punished, the fight on
the mountain, where they exposed themselves with unusual recklessness,
and the final shelling from shrapnel and from lyddite. All accounts
agree that their attack was more open than usual. 'They were mowed down
in twenties that day, but it had no effect. They stood like fanatics,'
says one who fought against them. From first to last their conduct was
most gallant, and great credit is due to their leaders for the skilful
sudden concentration by which they threw their whole strength upon the
exposed force. Some eighty miles separate Warm Baths from Nooitgedacht,
and it seems strange that our Intelligence Department should have
remained in