any instant leap into a
flame.

It only remains to complete this synopsis of the movements of columns
within the Transvaal that I should add that after the conclusion of
Blood's movement in July, several of his columns continued to clear the
country and to harass Viljoen in the Lydenburg and Dulstroom districts.
Park, Kitchener, Spens, Beatson, and Benson were all busy at this
work, never succeeding in forcing more than a skirmish, but continually
whittling away wagons, horses, and men from that nucleus of resistance
which the Boer leaders still held together.

Though much hampered by the want of forage for their horses, the Boers
were ever watchful for an opportunity to strike back, and the long list
of minor successes gained by the British was occasionally interrupted
by a petty reverse. Such a one befell the small body of South African
Constabulary stationed near Vereeniging, who encountered upon July 13th
a strong force of Boers supposed to be the main commando of De Wet.
The Constabulary behaved with great gallantry but were hopelessly
outnumbered, and lost their seven-pounder gun, four killed, six wounded,
and twenty-four prisoners. Another small reverse occurred at a far
distant point of the seat of war, for the irregular corps known as
Steinacker's Horse was driven from its position at Bremersdorp in
Swaziland upon July 24th, and had to fall back sixteen miles, with a
loss of ten casualties and thirty prisoners. Thus in the heart of a
native state the two great white races of South Africa were to be seen
locked in a desperate conflict. However unavoidable, the sight was
certainly one to be deplored.

To the Boer credit, or discredit, are also to be placed those repeated
train wreckings, which cost the British during this campaign the lives
and limbs of many brave soldiers who were worthy of some less ignoble
fate. It is true that the laws of war sanction such enterprises, but
there is something indiscriminate in the results which is repellent to
humanity, and which appears to justify the most energetic measures to
prevent them. Women, children, and sick must all travel by these trains
and are exposed to a common danger, while the assailants enjoy a safety
which renders their exploit a peculiarly inglorious one. Two Boers,
Trichardt and Hindon, the one a youth of twenty-two, the other a man of
British birth, distinguished, or disgraced, themselves by this unsavoury
work upon the Delagoa line, but with the ext