columns under Crabbe, Capper, Wyndham, Nickall, and
Lund, were continually on the move, with little to show for it save an
ever-widening area of settled country in their rear. In a skirmish on
February 20th Judge Hugo, a well-known Boer leader, was killed, and
Vanheerden, a notorious rebel, was captured. At the end of this month
Fouche's tranquil occupation of the north-east was at last disturbed,
and he was driven out of it into the midlands, where he took refuge with
the remains of his commando in the Camdeboo Mountains. Malan's men had
already sought shelter in the same natural fortress. Malan was wounded
and taken in a skirmish near Somerset East a few days before the general
Boer surrender. Fouche gave himself up at Cradock on June 2nd.

The last incident of this scattered, scrambling, unsatisfactory campaign
in the Cape peninsula was the raid made by Smuts, the Transvaal leader,
into the Port Nolloth district of Namaqualand, best known for its copper
mines. A small railroad has been constructed from the coast at this
point, the terminus being the township of Ookiep. The length of the
line is about seventy miles. It is difficult to imagine what the Boers
expected to gain in this remote corner of the seat of war, unless they
had conceived the idea that they might actually obtain possession
of Port Nolloth itself, and so restore the communications with their
sympathisers and allies. At the end of March the Boer horsemen appeared
suddenly out of the desert, drove in the British outposts, and summoned
Ookiep to surrender. Colonel Shelton, who commanded the small garrison,
sent an uncompromising reply, but he was unable to protect the railway
in his rear, which was wrecked, together with some of the blockhouses
which had been erected to guard it. The loyal population of the
surrounding country had flocked into Ookiep, and the Commandant found
himself burdened with the care of six thousand people. The enemy had
succeeded in taking the small post of Springbok, and Concordia, the
mining centre, was surrendered into their hands without resistance,
giving them welcome supplies of arms, ammunition, and dynamite. The
latter was used by the Boers in the shape of hand-bombs, and proved to
be a very efficient weapon when employed against blockhouses. Several of
the British defences were wrecked by them, with considerable loss to
the garrison; but in the course of a month's siege, in spite of several
attacks, the Boers were never a