45th Nov. We have heard more than once of the repulse of the Boers at Mafeking with heavy loss and Reuter now sends us the official account. Again we must deplore the large proportion of officers killed, though the British loss, our men being on the defensive and entrenched, was comparatively small. The only other war news is to the effect that the vessels conveying the First Army Corps are rapidly arriving at Cape Town, and that the larger Durban. Sir Redvers Buller may be portion of them are being sent to getting anxious about the torve at ladysmith, and may have determined to relieve it as soon as possible, or he may be planning to have a' large enough force in Natal to enable him to attack the Orange Free State on both sides. We hear no more of Delagoa Bay as a base, so that the negotiations for its use must have broken down, and next to Delagoa Bay the best road to the Transvaal lies through the Free State, a road which we could not have used had President Steyn remained neutral.
18th Nov.
Operations in South Africa are evidently waiting for Sir Redvers Buller to get his two forees ready for fighting, but we may certainly expect soon to hear that the eight thousand men who have been sent to Durban are on their way to raise the investment of Ladysmith, Meanwhile Ladysmith, Kimberley, and Mafeking ate holding out as far as we know, and we trust that the Boers will soon have all they can to protect their own frontiers with-our sending out small expeditions to harass Rhodesia dnd British Bechuanaland. Fort Tuli is a few miles north of the Transvaal frontier, and King Khama's country is northwest. of the Transvaal in the Bechuanaland Protectorate. Major-General Sir Charles Warren, G.C.1.G., KEB, RE, ete, etc, is an. old South African fighter. He was one of the Commissioners for laying down the boundary line of Griqualand West and the Orange Free State in 1876-77; commanded _the Diamond Fields Horse in the Kaffir War and the Rebellion in Griqualand West in 1878; commanded the troops against the Bechuanas in 1878, and in the Northern Border Expedition in 1879, and again commanded the Bechuanaland Expedition in 1884-85; and is remembered out here by his having commanded the troops in the Straits Settlements from 1889 to 1894.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.