CAMPAIGN AGAINST RAIDERS

Auckland Star, Volume XXXII, Issue 49, 27 February 1901, Page 5

CAMPAIGN AGAINST RAIDERS

DE LISLE'S GREAT MARCH.

ORANGE RIVER CLOSELY GUARDED.

[N.Z. Peess Associa

(Received 9.3 a.m.)

LONDON, February 20

Colonel De Lisle reached Yosburg on 22nd. Since leaving the railway at Picquetberg Road, within fifty /miles of Capetown, his force travelled ' five Hundred miles through country despoiled of provisions, forage, and animals by the invading Boers column. De Lisle's brigade patrolled a front of sixty miles. On Sunday Brigadier-General Sir Charles Parsons engaged a section of the Cape invaders under Commandant Seheepers, near Willowmore, eighty miles south-east of Beaufort West. He shelled the Boers out of a strong entrenched position with heavy loss. Commandant ITertzog, with the western column of raiders and fifteen hundred remounts intended for De Wet, is moving east, towards Kallcbult in the Preiska district. LONDON, February 2G. Mr Bennett Burleigh states that the Orange River is still flooded, and that the Boers are trekking east and north. The British columns, forming a wide cordon from Orange River station to Norval's Pout (a distance of over 100 miles in a straight line) are closing in. The only means of escape left to the Boers is by swimming the river. De Wet and Steyn are close to Petrusville.