CAPE INVASION SERIOUS.

Auckland Star, Volume XXXII, Issue 41, 18 February 1901, Page 5

CAPE INVASION SERIOUS.

DE WET MAKING HEADWAY.

[N.Z. Press Association.—Copyright.]

(Received S.4G a.m.)

LONDON, February IT

yVhile a hundred Boers were conveying forage through Giringspoort they were ambushed by a detachment of the recently formed Cape Cyclist Corps, who were entrenched, upon a kopje. The cyclists killed seventeen.

All the male inhabitants of Oras-

fontein have been arrested on

charge of assisting the raiders

The raiders possess splendid maps of Cape Colony, provided by ex-Presi-dent Steyn before the war.

LONDON, February 15

Three hundred and fifty men of De Wet's commando occupied Philipstown on Tuesday (February 12). The small garrison-of Yeomanry defended the place gallantly, while Lieutenant Henniker aud sixty Victorian Imperial Bushmen rushed and occupied a kopje commanding the town, firing continually all day.

Major Granville Smith and two squadrons of Victorians, under Major L. E. Clarke, arrived in the evening, and the Boers retired to the northeast.

De Wet's action in shooting the peace envoys, and the action of the raiders in looting their friends' property in Cape Colony, is having the effect of alienating Dutch sympathy from the Boer cause.

Before the Boers left Calvinia, in the west of the colony, they flogged several officials for not revealing arms. They also flogged the magistrate at Buke and shot native drivers, A number of native drivers were also captured and shot elsewhere.

LONDON, February 1G

The "Daily Mail" states that De Wet and Steyn crossed the railway between Hontkraal and Potfontein, north of De Aar, on February 14, destroying- two culverts.

Colonel Crabbe, following De Wet, captured 14 waggons and some prisoners.

Haasbroek and Woest, commanding a portion of De Wet's force, crossed Zandrift on February 9. They were repulsed at Philipstown and I'etrustifle.

Fighting on February 12 and 13 the .British used a 15-pounder captured from the Boers, the British shrapnel bursting splendidly. Subsequently Colonel Plumer's force of Australian Bushmen arrived with a pom-pom and extricated 200 Imperial and South African Horse, who were hard pressed by Haasbroek twenty miles west of Colesburg. The British . casualties were light, and the enemy's heavier.

Colonel Plumer, pursuing Hie Boers westward, captured a Maxim and great portions of De Wet's ammunition train. - |

The Boers who lately evacuated Calvinia are splendidly mounted, and are travelling in the direction of Kern hardt, on the Orange River, at. the rate of sixty miles daily.

Colonel de Lisle was given a frenzied welcome at Calvin ia; where Boer cruelty, vindictive executions and wanton destruction recalled the worst scenes of the early campaign in Northern Natal.

OU ADP !7Mfi A nPMPATTO T)I?DADTI?Ih bHAIvI MUAbMMNIb iwuiiiM).