emy, or at most only a few small
parties hovering on the sky-line. Scouts and patrols are often engaged,
and no one can wander out of sight of the column but the ugly voice of a
Mauser will warn him back. Invisible eyes watch us all the time, ready
to take advantage of detached parties or unprotected convoys. We are
teased and annoyed, but never definitely engaged. We are like the
traveller and the gnats--

"Nor could my weak arm disperse
The host of insects gathered round my head,
And ever with me as I walked along."

Carried on in a country like this, where a man on horseback is like a
bird in the air, and by people so individually keen as the Boers, the
present kind of war may go on indefinitely. After all, it is the sort of
war the Boers understand best. The big-battle war is a matter of science
which he had in a great measure to be instructed in, but this is a war
which the natural independence of his own character and self-reliant
habits make natural to him. The war, now that it has become a matter of
individuals, is exciting all its old enthusiasm again, and the Burghers
are up in arms in every district in the country. Fighting in their own
country, the Boers have one advantage over us, which is their salvation:
they can disperse in flight, but we cannot disperse in pursuit.

This vagrant form of war is more formidable than it sounds. These
wandering bands can unite with great rapidity and deal when least
expected a rapid blow. As we cannot catch them we must be prepared to
receive them at all points. The veldt is a void to us, all darkness, and
it hides a threat which, as it may fall anywhere, must be guarded
against everywhere. This, what with all our garrisons and enormous lines
of communication, means that the far greater part of our army has to act
on the defensive; to sit still waiting for an enemy who may be a hundred
miles off or behind the next hill. As for our wandering columns, they
have about as much chance of catching Boers on the veldt as a Lord
Mayor's procession would have of catching a highwayman on Hounslow
Heath. The enemy are watching us now from a rise a few miles away,
waiting for our next move, and probably discussing some devilry or other
they are up to. The line of our march is blotted out already. Where we
camp one day they camp the next. They are all round and about us like
water round a ship, parting before our bows and reuniting round our
stern. Our passage makes no imp