A GALLANT EXPLOIT.

Auckland Star, Volume XXXII, Issue 13, 16 January 1901, Page 5

A GALLANT EXPLOIT.

150 AGAINST A THOUSAND.

(JAPE RAIDERS STILL NEARER CAPETOWN

[K.Z. Press Association".—Copyrighl'.J

(Received. 10 a.m.)

LONDON, January 15

Colonel White, on the 3rd, sent, Captain Laing.with 150 of Kitchener's Bodyguard attached to General Knot's column, toward Reitz, twenty miles east of Lindley, in Orange River Colony. While ascending- a valley tbey encountered showers of explosive bullets from some kopjes six hundred yards on the right and left. The Boers numbered a thousand. The British retiring-, and meetingfive hundred Boers, galloped into a donga, and fought from cover desperately. Captain Laing- was shot through the heart. The enemy, surrounded the small force, which maintained a dogged resistance till the Boers threatened to kill the survivors. Lieut. Bateson pluckily galloped through, the Boers, and informed Colonel White. - Reinforcements were at once sent. They effectively shelled the enemy, \vh) galloped avvay on their approach, killing seventeen at one spot . After the engagement at Belfast, on the Delagoa railway, on the 7th, seventy-two men belonging to the Royal Irish and Shropshires were missing. A determined attack made on a convoy proceeding- k> Yryheid, in the south-eastern Transvaal, was repulsed at Blood River.

The Boers are raiding farms five miles from Johannesburg.