Oliffe, Bonynge, And Maclean, Who Had Been
Children Together, Were Shot Side By Side On The Ridge, And
Afterwards Buried In One Grave.
Of forty-three men in action,
fourteen were killed and twenty severely wounded.
Their sacrifice
was not in vain, however. The Boers were beaten back, and the
convoy, as well as Griquatown, was saved. Some thirty or forty
Boers were killed or wounded in the skirmish, and Conroy, their
leader, declared that it was the stiffest fight of his life.
In the autumn and winter of 1901 General French had steadily
pursued the system of clearing certain districts, one at a time,
and endeavouring by his blockhouses and by the arrangement of his
forces to hold in strict quarantine those sections of the country
which were still infested by the commandos. In this manner he
succeeded by the November of this year in confining the active
forces of the enemy to the extreme north-east and to the south-west
of the peninsula. It is doubtful if the whole Boer force,
three-quarters of whom were colonial rebels, amounted to more than
fifteen hundred men. When we learn that at this period of the war
they were indifferently armed, and that many of them were mounted
upon donkeys, it is impossible, after making every allowance for
the passive assistance of the farmers, and the difficulties of the
country, to believe that the pursuit was always pushed with the
spirit and vigour which was needful.
In the north-east, Myburgh, Wessels, and the truculent Fouche were
allowed almost a free hand for some months, while the roving bands
were rounded up in the midlands and driven along until they were
west of the main railroad.
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