The presence of these leaders attracted columns from several quarters and they were betimes theoretically surrounded.  Kritzinger, however, refused to consider himself surrounded and even worked freely in co-operation with Brand:  nor had J.C.  Smuts any intention of resigning his commission.  He crossed the Orange on September 3.  A fortnight later, Kritzinger and Brand parted company.  Kritzinger marched on the Orange, and near a drift of that river pounced upon and overwhelmed a weak detail of the force under Hart, who was acting as warden of the Cape Colony marches.  Brand made for the Bloemfontein-Thabanchu line of posts, which was the sport of every Boer leader who chose to hack at it, and which recently had scarcely impeded the progress of Van der Venter to the south for an hour.  On September 19, near Sannah’s Post, he ambushed and destroyed a party of mounted infantry engaged in raiding a farm.  Two guns and nearly 100 prisoners of war were taken by Brand.

Smuts’ arrival in the Cape Colony, like Kritzinger’s four months before, stimulated a waning cause.  Lotter, who had escaped French’s drives, had just been taken; the other rebel leaders were isolated and comparatively innocuous.  Fresh hopes were kindled, activities were renewed, when it was noised among the rebel bands that Smuts the Transvaaler had swooped down like an eagle from the north.

These hopes were not delusive.  Smuts made for the south, pursued by some of French’s columns.  Near Tarkastad on September 17 he ambushed and overwhelmed a detachment of regular cavalry and won a footing in the midlands, where rebellion again raised its head from the ground.

Smuts noticed and encouraged the promising movement and returned to the Zuurberg, out of which, however, he was soon hustled.  He went away to join a rebel leader named Scheepers, who had been working freely 200 miles away to the S.W. in the districts bordering the sea.  Scheepers, however, was taken prisoner near Prince Albert Road Station on the Capetown Railway before Smuts reached him; but Smuts continued his movement.  Smuts had entrusted the inflammatory work in the midlands to local leaders before he left the district, and now set himself to trespass beyond the furthest point reached by Scheepers, and to make a bold entry into the extreme S.W. corner of the Cape Colony.  Early in November he penetrated into the Ceres district, where he was less than 100 miles in a direct line from Capetown.  He had brilliantly performed the task set to him by Botha and Steyn at Standerton in June.  He had been in contact with and had evaded the majority of the units of Lord Kitchener’s widely disseminated army at one time or another during his ride of 1,100 miles, and in fourteen weeks had passed from the Gatsrand in the Transvaal to within a few days’ march of Capetown.