wing either to the stupidity of the Transvaal Government, or to
the treachery of the guards--a great many of them were left behind for
Lord Roberts to release and re-arm against us. Our burghers grumbled
much at this, and blamed the negligence of the Transvaalers.

Before we had had time to get the captured Yeomanry through into the
Transvaal, Sir Redvers Buller had forced his way over the Natal
frontier, crossing the Drakensberg between Botha's Pass and Laing's Nek.
This event, which happened on June the 17th, caused yet another panic
among our commandos.

"We are now," they said, "surrounded on all sides. Resistance and escape
are equally impossible for us."

Never during the whole course of the war were President Steyn and I so
full of care and anxiety as at this time. With Buller across our
frontier, and the enemy within the walls of Johannesburg and Pretoria,
it was as much as we could do to continue the contest at all. However
brave and determined many of our burghers and officers might be, and, in
fact, were, our numerical weakness was a fact that was not to be got
over, and might prove an insuperable obstacle to our success. Moreover,
the same thing was now going on in the Transvaal after the capture of
Pretoria, as we had witnessed in the Free State after the fall of
Bloemfontein--nearly all the burghers were leaving their commandos and
going back to their farms. Plenty of officers, but no troops! This was
the pass to which we were come.

It was only the remembrance of how the tide had turned in the Free State
that gave us the strength to hold out any longer.

President Steyn and I sent telegram after telegram to the Government and
to the chief officers, encouraging them to stand fast. Meanwhile the two
Generals, De la Rey and Louis Botha, were giving us all a splendid
example of fortitude. Gazing into the future unmoved, and facing it as
it were with clenched teeth, they prosecuted the war with invincible
determination.

* * * * *

That the reader may the better appreciate the actual condition of our
affairs at this time, I think it well to make a short statement as to
the various districts of the Orange Free State, and the number of men
in each on whom we could still rely!

The burghers of Philippolis and Kaapstad had surrendered _en masse_ to
the English. In the first named of these districts, only Gordon Fraser
and Norval, in the second only Cornelius du Preez and ano