Two other small actions performed at this period of the war demand a passing notice.  One was a smart engagement near Kraai Railway Station, in which Major Broke of the Sappers with a hundred men attacked a superior Boer force upon a kopje and drove them off with loss—­a feat which it is safe to say he could not have accomplished six months earlier.  The other was the fine defence made by 125 of the Canadian Mounted Rifles, who, while guarding the railway, were attacked by a considerable Boer force with two guns.  They proved once more, as Ladybrand and Elands River had shown, that with provisions, cartridges, and brains, the smallest force can successfully hold its own if it confines itself to the defensive.

And now the Boer cause appeared to be visibly tottering to its fall.  The flight of the President had accelerated that process of disintegration which had already set in.  Schalk Burger had assumed the office of Vice-President, and the notorious Ben Viljoen had become first lieutenant of Louis Botha in maintaining the struggle.  Lord Roberts had issued an extremely judicious proclamation, in which he pointed out the uselessness of further resistance, declared that guerilla warfare would be ruthlessly suppressed, and informed the burghers that no fewer than fifteen thousand of their fellow-countrymen were in his hands as prisoners, and that none of these could he released until the last rifle had been laid down.  From all sides in the third week of September the British forces were converging on Komatipoort, the frontier town.  Already wild figures, stained and tattered after nearly a year of warfare, were walking the streets of Lourenco Marques, gazed at with wonder and some distrust by the Portuguese inhabitants.  The exiled burghers moodily pacing the streets saw their exiled President seated in his corner of the Governor’s verandah, the well-known curved pipe still dangling from his mouth, the Bible by his chair.  Day by day the number of these refugees increased.  On September 17th special trains were arriving crammed with the homeless burghers, and with the mercenaries of many nations—­French, German, Irish-American, and Russian—­all anxious to make their way home.  By the 19th no fewer than seven hundred had passed over.

At dawn on September 22nd a half-hearted attempt was made by the commando of Erasmus to attack Elands River Station, but it was beaten back by the garrison.  While it was going on Paget fell upon the camp which Erasmus had left behind him, and captured his stores.  From all over the country, from Plumer’s Bushmen, from Barton at Krugersdorp, from the Colonials at Heilbron, from Clements on the west, came the same reports of dwindling resistance and of the abandoning of cattle, arms, and ammunition.