1900 - Mafeking siege day 178 (82%).
1901 - Plumer occupies Pietersburg.
1902 - Colenbrander defeats Beyers near Pietersburg. Badenhorst captures a detachment of 200 men at Hartenbosch.
In Mafeking:
A quiet day. A body of women, who, at Smitheman's instigation, was endeavouring to escape towards Kanya, where food is ready for them, was turned back by the Boers. To the south a similar body was also stopped, and by direction of the Boer in charge each one was stripped, shambokked, and driven back naked to Mafeking. Yesterday there was a desperate fight between a party of our Fingoes engaged in cattle raiding and the Boers; the former were cut off and surrounded in a " pan," where they took what cover they could and defended their lives to the last. Out of a party of some thirty odd, ten or eleven got away when they repulsed the first attack of the Boers. The Boers returned, however, with one hundred more men, and killed all but one man. They had two Maxims and a one-pound Maxim-Nordenfelt. The fight lasted twenty-five hours, and by the account of the wounded survivor, corroborated by the women who returned to-day, the Boers must have suffered severe loss. The survivor escaped by hiding in the reeds, and is now in hospital with a wound in his stomach. The natives were vastly outnumbered, and made a stubborn resistance with their obsolete arms against all the Boers could bring against them. Unfortunate it is that so few of many brave men escaped.
Snyman is becoming remarkably civil in his intercourse, and had sent in a letter saying he was astonished that natives had been employed cattle raiding, as they were such barbarians. They were right gallant barbarians, anyhow. Smitheman has a wonderful insight into native character, and a marvellous grasp of the Baralong. It is curious to note how the Englishman associated with the natives identifies himself with his tribe and becomes a Zulu, Baralong, Fingoe or Basuto with a firm belief that all other natives except his own particular tribe are no good at all and that their methods of fighting are useless. Having heard the point discussed by many of my friends and having witnessed their implicit confidence in their own particular tribe and distrust of the others, one can understand that the foreigner may see something to laugh at in an Englishman's absolute and justified confidence in the English. They call it insularity in Europe. I wonder what they would call its offspring here.
