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Through this district, which is intersected by ranges running generally east and west, and which contains some towns of importance, the troops set free by the relief of Mafeking advanced in two columns towards Pretoria and Johannesburg.
I am waiting to go to my farm, which is one hour over the hill, but when I heard your gun I was afraid the Kaffirs were near. They know we are only women or sick men here, and they have guns, and they are jumping about. Your Colonel at Mafeking gave them guns, and now they run about stealing and murdering. All last night I dared not move from here, although we have no food.
At the same time, he sent Smuts to the Hartebeestfontein district, out of which he had just been driven. The audacity of the act was justified, for Smuts maintained himself against Babington during the whole of April. Early in May a determined effort was made to clear the district. Methuen after he had relieved Hoopstad was recalled to Mafeking, and then went to Lichtenburg.
The railway from Buluwayo to Mafeking was held as far as possible towards the south by patrols of police under Nicholson, and the Rhodesian Volunteers under Holdsworth were also on the line.
It was known that an attempt by Carrington to relieve the place on August 5th had been beaten back, and that the state of the country appeared so threatening that he had been compelled, or had imagined himself to be compelled, to retreat as far as Mafeking, evacuating Zeerust and Otto's Hoop, abandoning the considerable stores which were collected at those places.
In the gap between the railhead and Mafeking, a Boer commando, said to have been detached from Mafeking by Cronje, was at Sekwani on the N.W. border of the Transvaal and within striking distance of the Western line. It was face to face with the border tribes and was soon in trouble with them.
To many of them surrender would have meant nothing more than release from a diet of horse-flesh and the irritating confinement of a siege; but no man and no woman in Mafeking even breathed the suggestion that Baden-Powell should haul down his flag; and on the hundredth day of the siege Mafeking sent a telegram of loyal devotion to the Queen, whose anxiety for their safety was not concealed from the world.
At two places, Mafeking and Kimberley, the assailants were, as an English journal justly put it, "foiled by colonial forces hastily organised, and stiffened by small regular detachments which have shown far more enterprise on the offensive than their besiegers have done."
Then we heard about Mafeking the armoured trains, the bombardment, the sorties, the dynamite wagons all, in fact, that is yet known of what may become an historic defence. 'And how many Boers are killed? cried a private soldier from the back. The man hesitated, but the desire to please was strong within him. 'More than two thousand, he said, and a fierce shout of joy answered him.
And with all these distressing experiences to wear him down and sicken his heart, our hero found himself further hampered by treachery in his own camp. Treachery it was that frustrated Baden-Powell's great effort to break the cordon pressing so relentlessly upon little Mafeking, and by that means open up communication with those marching to his relief.
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