d upon which Boer families were
dependent for their lives. Considering that these tactics were continued
for over a year, and that they resulted in the death or mutilation of
many hundreds of British officers and men, it is really inexplicable
that the British authorities did not employ the means used by all armies
under such circumstances--which is to place hostages upon the trains. A
truckload of Boers behind every engine would have stopped the practice
for ever. Again and again in this war the British have fought with the
gloves when their opponents used their knuckles.

We will pass now to a consideration of the doings of General Paget, who
was operating to the north and north-east of Pretoria with a force which
consisted of two regiments of infantry, about a thousand horsemen, and
twelve guns. His mounted men were under the command of Plumer. In the
early part of November this force had been withdrawn from Warm Baths and
had fallen back upon Pienaar's River, where it had continual skirmishes
with the enemy. Towards the end of November, news having reached
Pretoria that the enemy under Erasmus and Viljoen were present in force
at a place called Rhenoster Kop, which is about twenty miles north of
the Delagoa Railway line and fifty miles north-east of the capital,
it was arranged that Paget should attack them from the south, while
Lyttelton from Middelburg should endeavour to get behind them. The force
with which Paget started upon this enterprise was not a very formidable
one. He had for mounted troops some Queensland, South Australian, New
Zealand, and Tasmanian Bushmen, together with the York, Montgomery, and
Warwick Yeomanry. His infantry were the 1st West Riding regiment
and four companies of the Munsters. His guns were the 7th and 38th
batteries, with two naval quick-firing twelve-pounders and some smaller
pieces. The total could not have exceeded some two thousand men. Here,
as at other times, it is noticeable that in spite of the two hundred
thousand soldiers whom the British kept in the field, the lines of
communication absorbed so many that at the actual point of contact they
were seldom superior and often inferior in numbers to the enemy. The
opening of the Natal and Delagoa lines though valuable in many ways, had
been an additional drain. Where every culvert needs its picket and every
bridge its company, the guardianship of many hundreds of miles of rail
is no light matter.

In the early morning of Novemb