3-070-958 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

The Basuto War: colonial volunteers reconnoitring - return of the scout, 1881. The British Army in Basutoland, (South Africa). Telegrams from the Cape confirm the news that the Boers in the Transvaal have risen against the British Government and re-established a Republican form of government, after having occupied the town of Heidelberg. Full confirmation has been given to the painful report from the Cape which reached this country on Thursday week. An official telegraphic despatch received at the Colonial Office states that the head-quarters and two hundred and fifty men of the 94th Foot were assailed and overpowered by the Boers between Leydenberg and Pretoria; that one hundred and twenty were killed or wounded, and that "the rest were taken."...we should be glad to learn that the first accounts of the massacre of a company of the 94th Regiment by the Boers were exaggerated, yet the latest official telegram from Sir Pomeroy Colley does not leads us to believe that such is the case'. From "Illustrated London News", 1881.