Not only so, but French was north of him; and as it turned out it was French, in virtue of the superior mobility of his cavalry, who headed him off to the eastward, giving time for the British infantry to come up.

The trains went with Cronje, and apparently it was his unwillingness to drop them, rather than the direction of his retreat, that lost him.

Because men not so encumbered escaped north, it cannot be certainly concluded that he could by the same course have saved his trains.
[Footnote 36: See summary of a letter of Michael Davitt, whose Boer sympathies are well known, from Kroonstadt, March 31, to the Dublin _Freeman's Journal_, given in the London _Times_, June 25, 1900.] Be it as it may, Friday morning the 16th found the Boer lines at Magersfontein empty.

The presence of British divisions south of the Modder compelled Cronje to take a course {p.277} north of it.

Except for the drifts, the river thus protected his flank; and if he could, by diverging sufficiently, slip undetected past Klip Drift, leaving the easternmost of the British divisions--Kelly-Kenny--in his rear, he might reach the point he aimed at, Koodoosrand Drift, twenty-four miles north-east of Klip Drift, cross there, and so reach the direct road from Jacobsdal to Bloemfontein.