reconnoitring and sketching the country in
the neighbourhood of the railway bridge. On the 6th of November a
party of the 9th Lancers and mounted infantry, accompanied by guns,
had scouted up the railway to within five miles of Belmont. On the 9th
another reconnaissance was made up the line, past Belmont, to Honey
Nest Kloof, 37 miles from Orange River station. No Boers were seen
about Belmont, though they had left traces of their presence in broken
culverts and other damage to the railway. After falling back for the
night to Witteputs, the patrol marched north-eastward on the morning
of the 10th, and encountered several hundred Boers, with field guns, a
few miles to the east of Belmont. A skirmish ensued in which Lt.-Col.
C. E. Keith-Falconer was killed, Lt. C. C. Wood mortally wounded, and
Lts. F. Bevan and H. C. Hall and four men wounded. To the westward of
the railway line a detachment of thirty of Rimington's Guides
successfully reconnoitred as far as Prieska. Though the information
brought back by these reconnaissances was mainly negative, on the 18th
November Major R. N. R. Reade, Lord Methuen's Intelligence officer,
was able from various sources of information to report that a force,
estimated at from 700 to 1,200 men, with four guns, was at or near
Belmont; and that a small commando under Jourdaan had been
successfully recruiting from the disloyal farmers in the districts of
Barkly West, Campbell, Douglas, and Griquatown, which lay to the west
and north-west of the line of advance to Kimberley.

[Sidenote: Constitution of 1st Division.]

Thanks to the strenuous efforts of the staff and the departmental
corps, the reconstituted first division[147] was by the 20th of
November ready to take the field. Equipped with mule transport, and
marching with a minimum of baggage, Lord Methuen's column consisted of
about 7,726 infantry, 850 cavalry and mounted infantry, two batteries
of Royal Field artillery, four companies of Royal engineers and a
Naval brigade.

[Footnote 147: For the causes which led to the partial
dispersion of the 1st division on its arrival in South
Africa, see Chapter XI.]

It was thus composed:--

Naval brigade--Captain R. C. Prothero, R.N.:--
Four naval 12-pr. 12-cwt. guns, with 363 officers and men of the
Royal Navy, sailors, Royal Marine artillery and Royal Marine Light
Infantry.[148]

[Footnote 148: Owing to difficulties with transport