At This Time They Were A Hundred
Miles Inside The Colony, And Nearly Three Hundred From Hertzog's
Western Column.
In the meantime Lord Kitchener, who had descended for a few days to
De Aar, had shown great energy in organising small mobile columns
which should follow and, if possible, destroy the invaders.
Martial
law was proclaimed in the parts of the Colony affected, and as the
invaders came further south the utmost enthusiasm was shown by the
loyalists, who formed themselves everywhere into town guards. The
existing Colonial regiments, such as Brabant's, the Imperial and
South African Light Horse - Thorneycroft's, Rimington's, and the
others - had already been brought up to strength again, and now two
new regiments were added, Kitchener's Bodyguard and Kitchener's
Fighting Scouts, the latter being raised by Johann Colenbrander,
who had made a name for himself in the Rhodesian wars. At this
period of the war between twenty and thirty thousand Cape colonists
were under arms. Many of these were untrained levies, but they
possessed the martial spirit of the race, and they set free more
seasoned troops for other duties.
It will be most convenient and least obscure to follow the
movements of the western force (Hertzog's), and afterwards to
consider those of the eastern (Kritzinger's). The opening of the
year saw the mobile column of Free Staters 150 miles over the
border, pushing swiftly south over the barren surface of the Karoo.
It is a country of scattered farms and scanty population; desolate
plains curving upwards until they rise into still more desolate
mountain ranges.
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