They Moved Swiftly About,
Obtaining Remounts From Their Friends, And Avoiding Everything In
The Nature Of An Action, Save When The Odds Were Overwhelmingly In
Their Favour.
Numerous small posts or patrols cut off, many
skirmishes, and one or two railway smashes were the fruits of this
invasion, which lasted till the end of the war, and kept the Colony
in an extreme state of unrest during that period.
A short account
must be given here of the movement and exploits of these hostile
bands, avoiding, as far as possible, that catalogue of obscure
'fonteins' and 'kops' which mark their progress.
The invasion was conducted by two main bodies, which shed off
numerous small raiding parties. Of these two, one operated on the
western side of the Colony, reaching the sea-coast in the
Clanwilliam district, and attaining a point which is less than a
hundred miles from Cape Town. The other penetrated even more deeply
down the centre of the Colony, reaching almost to the sea in the
Mossel Bay direction. Yet the incursion, although so far-reaching,
had small effect, since the invaders held nothing save the ground
on which they stood, and won their way, not by victory, but by the
avoidance of danger. Some recruits were won to their cause, but
they do not seem at that time to have been more than a few hundreds
in number, and to have been drawn for the most part from the
classes of the community which had least to lose and least to
offer.
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