es in the war, so that he might be excused if he
felt some personal as well as patriotic reasons for pushing a relentless
pursuit. On crossing the railroad De Wet turned furiously upon his
pursuers, and, taking an excellent position upon a line of kopjes rising
out of the huge expanse of the Karoo, he fought a stubborn rearguard
action in order to give time for his convoy to get ahead. He was hustled
off the hills, however, the Australian Bushmen with great dash carrying
the central kopje, and the guns driving the invaders to the westward.
Leaving all his wagons and his reserve ammunition behind him, the
guerilla chief struck north-west, moving with great swiftness, but
never succeeding in shaking off Plumer's pursuit. The weather continued,
however, to be atrocious, rain and hail falling with such violence
that the horses could hardly be induced to face it. For a week the two
sodden, sleepless, mud-splashed little armies swept onwards over the
Karoo. De Wet passed northwards through Strydenburg, past Hopetown, and
so to the Orange River, which was found to be too swollen with the
rains to permit of his crossing. Here upon the 23rd, after a march of
forty-five miles on end, Plumer ran into him once more, and captured
with very little fighting a fifteen-pounder, a pom-pom, and close on
to a hundred prisoners. Slipping away to the east, De Wet upon February
24th crossed the railroad again between Krankuil and Orange River
Station, with Thorneycroft's column hard upon his heels. The Boer leader
was now more anxious to escape from the Colony than ever he had been to
enter it, and he rushed distractedly from point to point, endeavouring
to find a ford over the great turbid river which cut him off from his
own country. Here he was joined by Hertzog's commando with a number of
invaluable spare horses. It is said also that he had been able to
get remounts in the Hopetown district, which had not been cleared--an
omission for which, it is to be hoped, someone has been held
responsible. The Boer ponies, used to the succulent grasses of the veld,
could make nothing of the rank Karoo, and had so fallen away that an
enormous advantage should have rested with the pursuers had ill luck
and bad management not combined to enable the invaders to renew their
mobility at the very moment when Plumer's horses were dropping dead
under their riders.

The Boer force was now so scattered that, in spite of the advent of
Hertzog, De Wet had fewer m