De la Rey, as already stated, had gone down to the Klerksdorp district, whence, for a time at least, he seems to have passed over into the north of the Orange River Colony.  The British pressure at Klerksdorp had become severe, and thither in May came the indefatigable Methuen, whom we last traced to Warrenton.  From this point on May 1st he railed his troops to Mafeking, whence he trekked to Lichtenburg, and south as far as his old fighting ground of Haartebeestefontein, having one skirmish upon the way and capturing a Boer gun.  Thence he returned to Mafeking, where he had to bid adieu to those veteran Yeomanry who had been his comrades on so many a weary march.  It was not their fortune to be present at any of the larger battles of the war, but few bodies of troops have returned to England with a finer record of hard and useful service.

No sooner, however, had Methuen laid down one weapon than he snatched up another.  Having refitted his men and collected some of the more efficient of the new Yeomanry, he was off once more for a three weeks’ circular tour in the direction of Zeerust.  It is difficult to believe that the oldest inhabitant could have known more of the western side of the Transvaal, for there was hardly a track which he had not traversed or a kopje from which he had not been sniped.  Early in August he had made a fresh start from Mafeking, dividing his force into two columns, the command of the second being given to Von Donop.  Having joined hands with Fetherstonhaugh, he moved through the south-west and finally halted at Klerksdorp.  The harried Boers moved a hundred miles north to Rustenburg, followed by Methuen, Fetherstonhaugh, Hamilton, Kekewich, and Allenby, who found the commandos of De la Rey and Kemp to be scattering in front of them and hiding in the kloofs and dongas, whence in the early days of September no less than two hundred were extracted.  On September 6th and 8th Methuen engaged the main body of De la Rey in the valley of the Great Marico River which lies to the north-west of Rustenburg.  In these two actions he pushed the Boers in front of him with a loss of eighteen killed and forty-one prisoners, but the fighting was severe, and fifteen of his men were killed and thirty wounded before the position had been carried.  The losses were almost entirely among the newly raised Yeomanry, who had already shown on several occasions that, having shed their weaker members and had some experience of the field, they were now worthy to take their place beside their veteran comrades.

The only other important operation undertaken by the British columns in the Transvaal during this period was in the north, where Beyers and his men were still harried by Grenfell, Colenbrander, and Wilson.  A considerable proportion of the prisoners which figured in the weekly lists came from this quarter.  On May 30th there was a notable action, the truth of which was much debated but finally established, in which Kitchener’s Scouts under Wilson surprised and defeated a Boer force under Pretorius, killing and wounding several, and taking forty prisoners.  On July 1st Grenfell took nearly a hundred of Beyers’ men with a considerable convoy.  North, south, east, and west the tale was ever the same, but so long as Botha, De la Rey, Steyn, and De Wet remained uncaptured, the embers might still at any instant leap into a flame.