ut there was to be many an item
on either side before the long reckoning should be closed. The Boers,
with De Wet, fled south, where it was not long before they showed that
they were still a military force with which we had to reckon.

In defiance of chronology it may perhaps make a clearer narrative if I
continue at once with the movements of De Wet from the time that he lost
his guns at Bothaville, and then come back to the consideration of the
campaign in the Transvaal, and to a short account of those scattered
and disconnected actions which break the continuity of the story. Before
following De Wet, however, it is necessary to say something of
the general state of the Orange River Colony and of some military
developments which had occurred there. Under the wise and conciliatory
rule of General Pretyman the farmers in the south and west were settling
down, and for the time it looked as if a large district was finally
pacified. The mild taxation was cheerfully paid, schools were reopened,
and a peace party made itself apparent, with Fraser and Piet de Wet, the
brother of Christian, among its strongest advocates.

Apart from the operations of De Wet there appeared to be no large force
in the field in the Orange River Colony, but early in October of 1900
a small but very mobile and efficient Boer force skirted the eastern
outposts of the British, struck the southern line of communications, and
then came up the western flank, attacking, where an attack was possible,
each of the isolated and weakly garrisoned townlets to which it came,
and recruiting its strength from a district which had been hardly
touched by the ravages of war, and which by its prosperity alone might
have proved the amenity of British military rule. This force seems to
have skirted Wepener without attacking a place of such evil omen to
their cause. Their subsequent movements are readily traced by a sequence
of military events.

On October 1st Rouxville was threatened. On the 9th an outpost of the
Cheshire Militia was taken and the railway cut for a few hours in the
neighbourhood of Bethulie. A week later the Boer riders were dotting the
country round Phillipolis, Springfontein and Jagersfontein, the latter
town being occupied upon October 16th, while the garrison held out upon
the nearest kopje. The town was retaken from the enemy by King Hall
and his men, who were Seaforth Highlanders and police. There was fierce
fighting in the streets, and from tw