three killed and a few wounded.  The flying column occupied the town of Douglas and hoisted the British flag there; but it was decided that the time had not yet come when it could be held, and the force fell back upon Belmont.  The rebel prisoners were sent down to Cape Town for trial.  The movement was covered by the advance of a force under Babington from Methuen’s force.  This detachment, consisting of the 9th and 12th Lancers, with some mounted infantry and G troop of Horse Artillery, prevented any interference with Pilcher’s force from the north.  It is worthy of record that though the two bodies of troops were operating at a distance of thirty miles, they succeeded in preserving a telephonic connection, seventeen minutes being the average time taken over question and reply.

Encouraged by this small success, Methuen’s cavalry on January 9th made another raid over the Free State border, which is remarkable for the fact that, save in the case of Colonel Plumer’s Rhodesian Force, it was the first time that the enemy’s frontier had been violated.  The expedition under Babington consisted of the same regiments and the same battery which had covered Pilcher’s advance.  The line taken was a south-easterly one, so as to get far round the left flank of the Boer position.  With the aid of a party of the Victorian Mounted Rifles a considerable tract of country was overrun, and some farmhouses destroyed.  The latter extreme measure may have been taken as a warning to the Boers that such depredations as they had carried out in parts of Natal could not pass with impunity, but both the policy and the humanity of such a course appear to be open to question, and there was some cause for the remonstrance which President Kruger shortly after addressed to us upon the subject.  The expedition returned to Modder Camp at the end of two days without having seen the enemy.  Save for one or two similar cavalry reconnaissances, an occasional interchange of long-range shells, a little sniping, and one or two false alarms at night, which broke the whole front of Magersfontein into yellow lines of angry light, nothing happened to Methuen’s force which is worthy of record up to the time of that movement of General Hector Macdonald to Koodoosberg which may be considered in connection with Lord Roberts’s decisive operations, of which it was really a part.

The doings of General Gatacre’s force during the long interval which passed between his disaster at Stormberg and the final general advance may be rapidly chronicled.  Although nominally in command of a division, Gatacre’s troops were continually drafted off to east and to west, so that it was seldom that he had more than a brigade under his orders.  During the weeks of waiting, his force consisted of three field batteries, the 74th, 77th, and 79th, some mounted police and irregular horse, the remains of the Royal Irish Rifles and the 2nd Northumberland Fusiliers, the 1st Royal Scots, the Derbyshire regiment,