Early in
the morning the townspeople had woke up to the fact that the army had
gone, and there was a general exodus of all who could obtain
conveyances. The Boers remained for some time in ignorance that the
force whose capture or destruction they had regarded as certain had
slipped away. They saw the tents, but the fact that neither men nor
horses were visible puzzled them, and it was eleven o'clock before some
of the more venturesome galloping down found that the English force had
escaped.
Then from all sides they poured into the town. Had they at once pursued
they might still have overtaken the retreating force before nightfall;
but they immediately set to work to loot the great stores of provisions
left behind, and to gather their pickings from the deserted houses of
Dundee, and so let slip their opportunity, and no pursuit whatever was
attempted. For four days the column continued its march, resting for a
few hours each day and usually marching all night. The road was terribly
bad, leading through narrow mountain passes, and had but a small force
of the enemy held the Waschbrank gorge, where the sides were for three
miles nearly perpendicular, a terrible calamity might have taken place.
Happily, however, the Boers were in absolute ignorance of the road which
the British troops were following, and concluded that they must have
somewhere crossed the railway and were making their way down by the
roads to its west.
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