Sidenote: Large captures of Boers.]

The precise extent of this loss is shown in the returns for September,
which record captures and surrenders almost as numerous as those of
the preceding month.

"It cannot be expected," Lord Kitchener adds, "even under the
most favourable conditions, that in the presence of the
ever-diminishing numbers opposing us in the field, these figures
can be maintained, but I feel confident that so long as any
resistance is continued, no exertion will be spared either by
officers or men of this force to carry out the task they still
have before them."[261]

[Footnote 261: Cd. 820. The September returns were: 170 Boers
killed in action, 114 wounded prisoners, 1,385 unwounded
prisoners, and 1,393 surrenders.]

[Sidenote: The railway lines secured.]

In another month a position had been reached in which it was possible for
the work of administrative reconstruction--interrupted a year ago by the
development of the guerilla warfare--to be resumed. At this date
(November, 1901), the resistance of the Dutch population had been weakened
by the loss of 53,000 fighting Boers, of whom 42,000 were in British
custody, while the rest had been killed, wounded, or otherwise put out of
action. In the Transvaal 14,700 square miles, and in the Orange River
Colony 17,000 square miles of territory had been enclosed by blockhouse
lines. A square formed roughly by lines running respectively from
Klerksdorp to Zeerust on the west, from Zeerust to Middelburg on the
north, from Middelburg to Standerton on the east, and from Standerton to
Klerksdorp on the south, enclosing Pretoria and the Rand, was the
protected area of the Transvaal. The whole of the Orange River Colony
south of the blockhouse line, Kimberley-Winberg-Bloemfontein-Ladybrand,
was also a protected area; and the Cape Colony, south of the main railway
lines, was similarly screened off. But an application of what may be
termed "the railway-cutting test" yields, perhaps, the most eloquent
testimony both to the magnitude of the original task undertaken by the
Imperial troops, and to the degree of success which had been obtained. In
October, 1900, the railway lines, upon which the British troops depended
for supplies of food and ammunition, were cut thirty-two times, or more
than once a day. The number of times in which they were cut in the
succeeding November was thirty; in December twenty-one