CABLE NEWS.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XXVIII, Issue 3637, 10 April 1906, Page 3

CABLE NEWS.

The Natal Outbreak.

A BRITISH COLUMN ATTACKED

Pietermaritzburg, April 6.

While Barabaata’s followers were looting a hotel the whites and two ladies fled to Keate’s Drift.

After rescuing the laager, Captain Hansel’s force of 150 tried to return to Grey town. Bambaata, however, by means of an ambuscade near Impauza, attacked at sundown the Vanguard under Major Dimmick with rifles and assegais.

The police coolly fired, killing many and keeping the natives at bay until Botha’s farm was reached at midnight. The nature of the country prevented Rankers being thrown out. The Kaffirs got between the vanguard and turned and fought their way back. Then the Kaffirs aE tacked the flanks, getting quite close owing to the dense bush. The ladies behaved with great courage, surrending their carriage to the dead and wounded. The natives hacked the dead bodies of Sergts. Brown and Harrison and two troopers, but the column rescued and buried the remains.

Four troopers were wounded. Major Diramtck and Trooper Folker are recommended for the Victoria Cross for returning at great peril to the rescue of Trumpeter Milton, who was dangerously wounded. Capetown, April 6.

Ford Selburne in opening the railway at Fourteen Streams, thus saving sixty miles between Capetown and Johannesburg, remarked that the New Hebrides problem was not exclusively an Australasian qnestion. Similarly the native question in South Africa was not exclusively domestic inasmuch as the Colonies rightly relied on the Motherland’s help in the emergency. He congratulated Natal on meeting the crisis with firmness and scrupulous justice. Capetown, April 6, Some Zululand Zulus have joined the rebel Bambaata. Captain Mansel has .organised a flying column under Inspector Lindsay to pursue him.

Bambaata’s men crawled through the grass and would have surprised- the hotel, only loyal natives warned the occupants. They fled just in time.

The ladies were seated on the pommels of troopers’ saddles, the horses going at full speed. They were hotly pursued by the Kaffirs, who fired repeatedly. Forty police have arrived to defend the laager at Keate’s Drift. They have sent an urgent appeal to Captain Mansel. The Government is mobilising three thousand militia.