CHAPTER IV.

The Boers.

"PEARLY in the year 1881 Englishmen were startled by I the receipt of strange intelligence. The garrisons in

I the Transvaal had been surrounded and isolated by insurgents. On the 20th of December a detachment of the 94th, more than 250 strong, marching from Lydenburg to Pretoria, were attacked in a narrow defile, Bronkhorst Spruit; the commanding officer and fifty-four men were killed, seven officers and ninety-one men were wounded, and the rest were taken prisoners. At the end of January General Colley, who was in command of the troops in Natal, advanced to the relief of the garrisons in the Trans­vaal. He found that his way was barred. Lang’s Nek, at the entrance of the pass over the Drakensberg leading from Natal to the Transvaal, had been occupied by the insurgents. The attack made by the force under General Colley, 1100 strong, on the 28th of January, was repulsed with heavy loss. Colonel Deane and all the staff and mounted officers were shot down, and 190 rank and file were reported as dead, wounded, or missing. Ten days later, on the 8th of February, as General Colley was patrolling the road to Newcastle with a force of 300 men, in order to maintain his line of communication between that place and the camp at Mount Prospect, he was attacked at Ingogo Heights. In this engagement four officers were killed, and three were wounded, and 150 men were reported killed or wounded. But the crowning disaster was still to come. On the night of the 26th of

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