y bridge
at Fish River, north of Cradock, was attacked, but the attempt was
foiled by the resistance of a handful of Cape Police and Lancasters. On
March 6th a party of Boers occupied the village of Pearston, capturing
a few rifles and some ammunition. On the same date there was a skirmish
between Colonel Parsons's column and a party of the enemy to the north
of Aberdeen. The main body of the invading force appears to have been
lurking in this neighbourhood, as they were able upon April 7th to
cut off a strong British patrol, consisting of a hundred Lancers and
Yeomanry, seventy-five of whom remained as temporary prisoners in
the hands of the enemy. With this success we may for the time leave
Kritzinger and his lieutenant, Scheepers, who commanded that portion of
his force which had penetrated to the south of the Colony.

The two invasions which have been here described, that of Hertzog in the
west and of Kritzinger in the midlands, would appear in themselves to
be unimportant military operations, since they were carried out by
small bodies of men whose policy was rather to avoid than to overcome
resistance. Their importance, however, is due to the fact that they were
really the forerunners of a more important incursion upon the part of De
Wet. The object of these two bands of raiders was to spy out the land,
so that on the arrival of the main body all might be ready for that
general rising of their kinsmen in the Colony which was the last chance,
not of winning, but of prolonging the war. It must be confessed that,
however much their reason might approve of the Government under which
they lived, the sentiment of the Cape Dutch had been cruelly, though
unavoidably, hurt in the course of the war. The appearance of so popular
a leader as De Wet with a few thousand veterans in the very heart of
their country might have stretched their patience to the breaking-point.
Inflamed, as they were, by that racial hatred which had always
smouldered, and had now been fanned into a blaze by the speeches of
their leaders and by the fictions of their newspapers, they were ripe
for mischief, while they had before their eyes an object-lesson of the
impotence of our military system in those small bands who had kept the
country in a ferment for so long. All was propitious, therefore, for the
attempt which Steyn and De Wet were about to make to carry the war into
the enemy's country.

We last saw De Wet when, after a long chase, he had been