surged ever higher upon the hillside. At last, with a cheer, the
Welshmen with their Kent and Essex comrades swept over the crest into
the ranks of that cosmopolitan crew of sturdy adventurers who are known
as the Johannesburg Police. For once the loss of the defence was greater
than that of the attack. These mercenaries had not the instinct which
teaches the Boer the right instant for flight, and they held their
position too long to get away. The British had left four hundred men on
the track of that gallant advance, but the vast majority of them were
wounded--too often by those explosive or expansive missiles which make
war more hideous. Of the Boers we actually buried over a hundred on the
ridge, and their total casualties must have been considerably in excess
of ours.

The action was strategically well conceived; all that Lord Roberts could
do for complete success had been done; but tactically it was a poor
affair, considering his enormous preponderance in men and guns. There
was no glory in it, save for the four regiments who set their faces
against that sleet of lead. The artillery did not do well, and were
browbeaten by guns which they should have smothered under their fire.
The cavalry cannot be said to have done well either. And yet, when all
is said, the action is an important one, for the enemy were badly shaken
by the result. The Johannesburg Police, who had been among their corps
d'elite, had been badly mauled, and the burghers were impressed by one
more example of the impossibility of standing in anything approaching
to open country against disciplined troops, Roberts had not captured the
guns, but the road had been cleared for him to Bloemfontein and, what
is more singular, to Pretoria; for though hundreds of miles intervene
between the field of Driefontein and the Transvaal capital, he never
again met a force which was willing to look his infantry in the eyes
in a pitched battle. Surprises and skirmishes were many, but it was the
last time, save only at Doornkop, that a chosen position was ever held
for an effective rifle fire--to say nothing of the push of bayonet.

And now the army flowed swiftly onwards to the capital. The
indefatigable 6th Division, which had done march after march, one more
brilliant than another, since they had crossed the Riet River, reached
Asvogel Kop on the evening of Sunday, March 11th, the day after the
battle. On Monday the army was still pressing onwards, disregarding all