You Have Forced Your Way Through Dense Jungles, Over Precipitous Mountains, Through And Over Which With Infinite Manual Labour You Have Had To Drag Heavy Guns And Ox-Wagons.

You have covered with almost incredible speed enormous distances, and that often on very short supplies of food.

You have endured the sufferings inevitable in war to sick and wounded men far from the base, without a murmur and even with cheerfulness.'

The words reflect honour both upon the troops addressed and upon the man who addressed them. From the middle of December 1900 Lord Kitchener took over the control of the campaign.

CHAPTER 32.

THE SECOND INVASION OF CAPE COLONY.

(DECEMBER 1900 TO APRIL 1901.)

During the whole war the task of the British had been made very much more difficult by the openly expressed sympathy with the Boers from the political association known as the Afrikander Bond, which either inspired or represented the views which prevailed among the great majority of the Dutch inhabitants of Cape Colony. How strong was this rebel impulse may be gauged by the fact that in some of the border districts no less than ninety per cent of the voters joined the Boer invaders upon the occasion of their first entrance into the Colony. It is not pretended that these men suffered from any political grievances whatever, and their action is to be ascribed partly to a natural sympathy with their northern kinsmen, and partly to racial ambition and to personal dislike to their British neighbours.

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