The task set to Smuts was, to all appearance, impossible of fulfilment.  Not only had he to collect a sufficient force in the Gatsrand under the eyes of British columns, but he had also to conduct it through the whole length of the Orange River Colony, and run the gauntlet of Elliott, C. Knox, Rundle, and Bruce Hamilton.  By the middle of July he had recruited 340 burghers, who travelled south in four parties with British columns at their heels and mustered near Hoopstad on August 1.

Here they entered the precincts of the area into which Lord Kitchener was endeavouring in one grand drive to sweep the Boer remnants of the S.W.  Transvaal and the Orange River Colony.  Elliott was wheeling round from Reitz through Vredefort and Klerksdorp and advancing on the line of the Modder River, behind which stood Bruce Hamilton.[59] A considerable amount of transport and live stock was taken; also 500 Boers, among whom Smuts and his commando were not.

He had succeeded on August 3 in wriggling by night through Elliott’s driving line and was now in rear of it.  He now divided his force into two commandos, one of which, under Van der Venter, made for the south by way of Brandfort.  With the other he boldly trailed behind Elliott and followed him to the Bloemfontein-Jacobsdal line of Constabulary posts, through which he passed without injury.  He then found himself entangled in Bruce Hamilton’s columns, and although he succeeded in reaching Springfontein, he was soon forced to retreat nearly seventy miles in the direction of Bloemfontein.  Nothing daunted, he made another dash for the south, and having evaded two pursuing columns entered Zastron on August 27, where he found Van der Venter waiting for him.  His daring and adventurous ride ranks as one of the most notable personal exploits of the war.  He had not only cut Elliott’s line from front to rear, but had afterwards enfranchised himself amid the swarm of Bruce Hamilton’s columns.  The lawyer Smuts was the De Wet of the Transvaal.

Kritzinger after fifteen weeks’ activity in the Cape Colony had returned to Zastron a few days before Smuts’ arrival.  His incursion into the Colony in May occurred at an opportune moment, for the local rebels were being severely worried.  He made at first for the Zuurberg, but being soon expelled from it and from the adjacent mountainous district north of Sterkstroom, circled back to the Orange and snapped up Jamestown.  He now flung his grenades on all sides.  One rebel leader reached the Transkei districts; others prowled between Graaff Reinet and the Capetown Railway.  Kritzinger himself captured a small British detachment near Maraisburg.

As in February when Lyttelton was brought down, so again in July the situation in the Cape Colony was sufficiently serious to call for outside assistance.  French was sent down from the Transvaal; Lord Kitchener himself came to Middelburg.  The measures concerted between them, a series of northward drives by the operation of which the rebels would be plastered against the railways, which were rapidly blockhoused for the purpose, met with indifferent success.  The disaffected midland districts were swept, but the leaders escaped.  Kritzinger crossed the Orange in August, and at Zastron awaited the arrival of J.C.  Smuts with new schemes for mischief.