xed by Boer proclamations. The first of these areas included
Griqualand West, Barkly West, Taungs, Vryburg, and Mafeking districts,
in fact, with the exception of the besieged towns of Kimberley,
Kuruman,[252] and Mafeking, the whole of the colony north of the Riet
river and of the Orange river below its junction with the Riet. East
of this came the Boer enclave round Colesberg, the extent of which was
being much diminished by General French's operations. Further east
again, the north-east angle of the colony, including the districts of
Herschel, Aliwal North, Barkly East, Wodehouse, and Albert, had for
the time being become _de facto_ Free State territory. Kruger
telegraphed to Steyn on the 20th of December: "I and the rest of the
War Commission decide that every person in the districts proclaimed,
so far as the annexed portions shall extend, shall be commandeered,
and those who refuse be punished. So say to all the officials south of
Orange river and in Griqualand West, that while we are already
standing in the fire they cannot expect to sit at home in peace and
safety." In all these areas, therefore, extraordinary pressure was
placed on the colonists to renounce their allegiance and take up arms
against their Sovereign. Indeed, but six weeks later the whole of the
inhabitants of the Barkly West district who refused to be commandeered
were, irrespective of nationality, removed from their homes by the
Boers' Landrosts and thrust across the Orange river in a state of
absolute destitution.[253] The number of recruits which had accrued to
the enemy's commandos by these means was already, by the end of
December, considerable; it was assessed at the time by the British
authorities as high as ten thousand. But the danger for the moment was
not so much the numerical strength of the actively disloyal as the
attitude of the disaffected in the districts which the enemy had not
reached. Here, again, the areas which caused special anxiety fell into
three groups. In the eastern province certain of the farmers of the
Stockenstroom and adjacent districts had gathered together in a laager
on the Katberg Pass across the Winterberg Mountains, a strong position
some forty miles in rear of General Gatacre at Queenstown. In the
thinly-populated and backward regions bordered by the Orange river on
the north, the Roggeveld and Nieuwveld Mountains on the south, and the
main line from Cape Town to De Aar on the east, racial feeling was
known to