Lyttelton’s dispositions continued for some days to be directed against the Natal raid upon which Botha was supposed to be still engaged, and the discovery that he had abandoned it was not made until October 1.  His capture did not seem to be a very difficult task, as his only way of escape was the Piet Retief defile by which he had entered the district three weeks before.

There was, however, an intermediate barrier, the irregular Pondwana range lying eastward of Vryheid, where he might be arrested.  Lyttelton’s plan was that Clements and B. Hamilton should press towards this barrier from the S.W., while W. Kitchener acted as a stop on the north side of it.  The range is pierced by several neks, at one of which, lying between the main heights and the Inyati spur, Botha was checked by Kitchener on October 2.  He then made a cast eastward to another nek and by abandoning his transport succeeded three nights later in getting round Kitchener’s left.  He easily kept Kitchener off in a rearguard action and made for Piet Retief.  Neither Clements nor B. Hamilton was ever in the running, and Kitchener was hampered by the necessity of watching several neks along a front of twenty miles.

There was, however, one more barrier for Botha to cross or to turn, the Slangapiesberg between Wakkerstroom and Piet Retief; but it scarcely delayed him for an hour.  Except one column, which was covering the building of a blockhouse line and which he evaded without difficulty, there was nothing to oppose him.  When a column under Plumer came upon the scene he had passed away on October 11 through Piet Retief towards Ermelo.  His movements had bewildered his opponents, who intent on frustrating a raid on Natal, had omitted to bar and bolt the door by which he had entered.  His capture would, in all probability, have ended the war.

When Botha left for the south he instructed B. Viljoen to carry on for him; but when he joined the itinerant Transvaal Government at Amsterdam he was disappointed to find that little or nothing had been done in his absence, thanks chiefly to the mobile energy of Benson, who hovered like a hawk over the terrorized laagers.  Moreover, the pale of Constabulary posts which formed the eastward section of the great ring fence enclosing the “protected area” had been advanced.  It now ran from Greylingstad to Wilge River Station on the Delagoa Bay Railway, and encroached upon the area in which Botha could act with reasonable hope of success.

The return of Botha, however, infused some spirit into the hustled commandos of the high veld, and he gladly accepted a suggestion that Benson should be attacked.  The Ermelo and Carolina men who had accompanied him to Natal returned to find that their districts had been roughly handled by Benson and were eager for reprisals.  On October 25 Botha narrowly escaped capture by two columns which had been sent after him from Standerton.