the men taking advantage of every possible cover.  Boers could be seen leaving their position in small bodies as the crackling, swaying line of the British surged ever higher upon the hillside.  At last, with a cheer, the Welshmen with their Kent and Essex comrades swept over the crest into the ranks of that cosmopolitan crew of sturdy adventurers who are known as the Johannesburg Police.  For once the loss of the defence was greater than that of the attack.  These mercenaries had not the instinct which teaches the Boer the right instant for flight, and they held their position too long to get away.  The British had left four hundred men on the track of that gallant advance, but the vast majority of them were wounded—­too often by those explosive or expansive missiles which make war more hideous.  Of the Boers we actually buried over a hundred on the ridge, and their total casualties must have been considerably in excess of ours.

The action was strategically well conceived; all that Lord Roberts could do for complete success had been done; but tactically it was a poor affair, considering his enormous preponderance in men and guns.  There was no glory in it, save for the four regiments who set their faces against that sleet of lead.  The artillery did not do well, and were browbeaten by guns which they should have smothered under their fire.  The cavalry cannot be said to have done well either.  And yet, when all is said, the action is an important one, for the enemy were badly shaken by the result.  The Johannesburg Police, who had been among their corps d’elite, had been badly mauled, and the burghers were impressed by one more example of the impossibility of standing in anything approaching to open country against disciplined troops, Roberts had not captured the guns, but the road had been cleared for him to Bloemfontein and, what is more singular, to Pretoria; for though hundreds of miles intervene between the field of Driefontein and the Transvaal capital, he never again met a force which was willing to look his infantry in the eyes in a pitched battle.  Surprises and skirmishes were many, but it was the last time, save only at Doornkop, that a chosen position was ever held for an effective rifle fire—­to say nothing of the push of bayonet.

And now the army flowed swiftly onwards to the capital.  The indefatigable 6th Division, which had done march after march, one more brilliant than another, since they had crossed the Riet River, reached Asvogel Kop on the evening of Sunday, March 11th, the day after the battle.  On Monday the army was still pressing onwards, disregarding all else and striking straight for the heart as Blucher struck at Paris in 1814.  At midday they halted at the farm of Gregorowski, he who had tried the Reform prisoners after the Raid.  The cavalry pushed on down Kaal Spruit, and in the evening crossed the Southern railway line which connects Bloemfontein with the colony, cutting it at a point some five miles from the town.  In spite of some not very strenuous opposition from a Boer force a hill was seized by a squadron of Greys with some mounted infantry and Rimington’s Guides, aided by U battery R.H.A., and was held by them all that night.