urs. The
hope for the future of South Africa is that they or their descendants
may learn that that banner which has come to wave above Pretoria means
no racial intolerance, no greed for gold, no paltering with injustice or
corruption, but that it means one law for all and one freedom for all,
as it does in every other continent in the whole broad earth. When that
is learned it may happen that even they will come to date a happier life
and a wider liberty from that 5th of June which saw the symbol of their
nation pass for ever from among the ensigns of the world.

CHAPTER 26. DIAMOND HILL--RUNDLE'S OPERATIONS.

The military situation at the time of the occupation of Pretoria was
roughly as follows. Lord Roberts with some thirty thousand men was in
possession of the capital, but had left his long line of communications
very imperfectly guarded behind him. On the flank of this line of
communications, in the eastern and north-eastern corner of the Free
State, was an energetic force of unconquered Freestaters who had rallied
round President Steyn. They were some eight or ten thousand in number,
well horsed, with a fair number of guns, under the able leadership of
De Wet, Prinsloo, and Olivier. Above all, they had a splendid position,
mountainous and broken, from which, as from a fortress, they could make
excursions to the south or west. This army included the commandos of
Ficksburg, Senekal, and Harrismith, with all the broken and desperate
men from other districts who had left their farms and fled to the
mountains. It was held in check as a united force by Rundle's Division
and the Colonial Division on the south, while Colvile, and afterwards
Methuen, endeavoured to pen them in on the west. The task was a hard
one, however, and though Rundle succeeded in holding his line intact, it
appeared to be impossible in that wide country to coop up altogether
an enemy so mobile. A strange game of hide-and-seek ensued, in which De
Wet, who led the Boer raids, was able again and again to strike our
line of rails and to get back without serious loss. The story of these
instructive and humiliating episodes will be told in their order. The
energy and skill of the guerilla chief challenge our admiration, and the
score of his successes would be amusing were it not that the points of
the game are marked by the lives of British soldiers.

General Buller had spent the latter half of May in making his way from
Ladysmith to Laing's Nek, an