les. After 1897, shooting clubs were
organised at Pretoria, Potchefstroom, Krugersdorp, Klerksdorp,
Johannesburg and Heidelberg, and frequent contests were held between the
various organisations. In the last contest before the war E. Blignaut, of
Johannesburg, won the prize by making one hundred and three out of a
possible one hundred and five points, the weapon having been a Mauser at a
range of seven hundred yards. These contests, naturally, developed many
fine marksmen, and, in consequence, it was not considered an extraordinary
feat for a man to kill a running hare at five hundred yards. While the
Boers were waiting for Lord Roberts's advance from Bloemfontein,
Commandant Blignaut, of the Transvaal, killed three running springbok at a
range of more than 1,700 yards, a feat witnessed by a score of persons.

The Boers were not without their periods of depression during the war, but
when these had passed there was no one who laughed more heartily over
their actions during those times than they. The first deep gloom that the
Boers experienced was after the three great defeats at Paardeberg,
Kimberley and Ladysmith, and the minor reverses at Abraham's Kraal, Poplar
Grove and Bloemfontein. It was amusing, yet pitiful, to see an army lose
all control of itself and flee like a wild animal before a forest fire. As
soon as the fight at Poplar Grove was lost the burghers mounted their
horses and fled northward. President Kruger and the officers could do
nothing but follow them. They passed through Bloemfontein and excited the
population there; then, evading roads and despising railway
transportation, they rode straight across the veld and never drew rein
until they reached Brandfort, more than thirty miles from Poplar Grove.
Hundreds did not stop even at Brandfort, but continued over the veld until
they reached their homes in the north of the Free State and in the
Transvaal. In their alarm they destroyed all the railway bridges and
tracks as far north as Smaldeel, sixty miles from Bloemfontein, and made
their base at Kroonstad, almost forty miles farther north. A week later a
small number of the more daring burghers sallied toward Bloemfontein and
found that not a single British soldier was north of that city. So fearful
were they of the British army before the discovery of their foolish flight
that two thousand cavalrymen could have sent them all across the Vaal
river.

APPENDIX

THE STRENGTH OF THE BOER ARMY

The