The Transvaal.

Manawatu Herald, 17 July 1900, Page 2

The Transvaal.

Ship loads of merchanise are arriving at Delagoa Bay in anticipation of trade after the declaration of peace. The " Daily Mail " Kipling poem fuud is providing for a second shipment of one thousand kits of warm clothing for the British prisoners now at Nooitgedacht. NITRAL PASS. i Later particulars that have come to hand show tbat'three companies of the Lincolns occupied Nitral Pass. Two of the companies encamped on the plain, the guns, with an escort of | Scots Greys, forming the advance and ; main body. In the fighting which ensued nearly every gunner and trooper were killed or wounded. Seven volunteers gallantly saved the Maxims. The Lincolns, though surrounded, did not waver, but fired steadily and economically. One body of fifteen men and one officer charged the enemy, but, tourteen of the number were killed or wounded. By night fall the supply of ammunition was exhausted, and the men fixed bayonets awaiting an attack. Thirty eventually struggled back to camp. Armed natives assisted the Boers. General Botha's attack was a desperate eftort to relieve General De Wet, the commandant in Orange River Colony, who was wedged in a small area which adjoins the Drakensbergs, near Basutoland. It was a commando of 2000 Boers, with four guns, under General De la Rey, which surprised N Ural's Nek. The Scots Greys and gunners lost forty men in trying to hold the hill. The Lincolns lost five officers out ot ten, including Colonel Roberts, who was^ wounded and captured. The total number captured is still unknown, as stragglers are still returning. SURPRISE OF A BATTERY. News comes to hand from Orange River Colony that a force of Boers, creeping through a mealie field, surprised the 38th Battery of Artillery, Which was marching to Bethlehem, to the west of Kroonstad. Two officers of the battery were killed and eighteen men were wounded. The enemy captured one of the guns but a party of Australian 'bushmen, by^ a superb charge, recaptured the gun and drove off the Boers with severe loss. ENGAGEMENT TO THE SOUTH. An engagement took place on Wednesday at Krugersdorp, .. twenty miles west of Johannesburg, and famous as the scene of the fight between the Boers and the Jameson raiders^ . . -_ The British troops comprised the Nineteenth Brigade, under MajorGeneral Smith-Dorrien, and they defeated the enemy with heavy loss. CLEARING THE RAILWAY LINE. Boer positions at Reitfontein— -be* tween Johannesburg and Pretoriahave been captured by dashing action on the part of the brigades under Lieut.-General French, the famous cavalry commander, and MajorGeneral Mason. The enemy fled before the British advance, and contrary to their usual custom, had to leave their dead behind them. BOER AND NATIVE. The native chief Seconecni severely defeated a force of marauding Boers on his territory. CLERY GOES BACK. The telegraph line along the NatalPretoria railway between Standerton and Greylidgstad has been repeatedly cut by the enemy of late. It consequence, Lieut.-General Clery, commander of the Second Division, has been obliged to turn back eastward from Vlakfbntein (some thirty-five miles from the junction of the two main railways) where he had junctioned with MajorGeneral Hart's brigade, in order to protect the line. A force of Boers which had begun to destroy the railway line at Paardekraal has been dispersed by General . Buller's troops. »