ears still making a stand
against the forces which had crushed them.

It had been long evident that the present British tactics of scouring
the country and capturing the isolated burghers must in time bring the
war to a conclusion. From the Boer point of view the only hope, or at
least the only glory, lay in reassembling once more in larger bodies and
trying conclusions with some of the British columns. It was with this
purpose that De Wet early in December assembled Wessels, Manie Botha,
and others of his lieutenants, together with a force of about two
thousand men, in the Heilbron district. Small as this force was, it
was admirably mobile, and every man in it was a veteran, toughened and
seasoned by two years of constant fighting. De Wet's first operations
were directed against an isolated column of Colonel Wilson's, which was
surrounded within twenty miles of Heilbron. Rimington, in response to a
heliographic call for assistance, hurried with admirable promptitude to
the scene of action, and joined hands with Wilson. De Wet's men were as
numerous, however, as the two columns combined, and they harassed the
return march into Heilbron. A determined attack was made on the convoy
and on the rearguard, but it was beaten off. That night Rimington's camp
was fired into by a large body of Boers, but he had cleverly moved his
men away from the fires, so that no harm was done. The losses in these
operations were small, but with troops which had not been trained in
this method of fighting the situation would have been a serious one.
For a fortnight or more after this the burghers contented themselves
by skirmishing with British columns and avoiding a drive which Elliot's
forces made against them. On December 18th they took the offensive,
however, and within a week fought three actions, two of which ended in
their favour.

News had come to British headquarters that Kaffir's Kop, to the
north-west of Bethlehem, was a centre of Boer activity. Three columns
were therefore turned in that direction, Elliot's, Barker's, and
Dartnell's. Some desultory skirmishing ensued, which was only remarkable
for the death of Haasbroek, a well-known Boer leader. As the columns
separated again, unable to find an objective, De Wet suddenly showed
one of them that their failure was not due to his absence. Dartnell had
retraced his steps nearly as far as Eland's River Bridge, when the Boer
leader sprang out of his lair in the Langberg and threw himsel