At about the same date a convoy proceeding from Beaufort West to Fraserburg was attacked by Malan’s commando.  The escort, which consisted of sixty Colonial Mounted Rifles and 100 of the West Yorkshire militia, was overwhelmed after a good defence, in which Major Crofton, their commander, was killed.  The wagons were destroyed, but the Boers were driven off by the arrival of Crabbe’s column, followed by those of Capper and Lund.  The total losses of the British in these two actions amounted to twenty-three killed and sixty-five wounded.

The re-establishment of settled law and order was becoming more marked every week in those south-western districts, which had long been most disturbed.  Colonel Crewe in this region, and Colonel Lukin upon the other side of the line, acting entirely with Colonial troops, were pushing back the rebels, and holding, by a well-devised system of district defence, all that they had gained.  By the end of February there were none of the enemy south of the Beaufort West and Clanwilliam line.  These results were not obtained without much hard marching and a little hard fighting.  Small columns under Crabbe, Capper, Wyndham, Nickall, and Lund, were continually on the move, with little to show for it save an ever-widening area of settled country in their rear.  In a skirmish on February 20th Judge Hugo, a well-known Boer leader, was killed, and Vanheerden, a notorious rebel, was captured.  At the end of this month Fouche’s tranquil occupation of the north-east was at last disturbed, and he was driven out of it into the midlands, where he took refuge with the remains of his commando in the Camdeboo Mountains.  Malan’s men had already sought shelter in the same natural fortress.  Malan was wounded and taken in a skirmish near Somerset East a few days before the general Boer surrender.  Fouche gave himself up at Cradock on June 2nd.

The last incident of this scattered, scrambling, unsatisfactory campaign in the Cape peninsula was the raid made by Smuts, the Transvaal leader, into the Port Nolloth district of Namaqualand, best known for its copper mines.  A small railroad has been constructed from the coast at this point, the terminus being the township of Ookiep.  The length of the line is about seventy miles.  It is difficult to imagine what the Boers expected to gain in this remote corner of the seat of war, unless they had conceived the idea that they might actually obtain possession of Port Nolloth itself, and so restore the communications with their sympathisers and allies.  At the end of March the Boer horsemen appeared suddenly out of the desert, drove in the British outposts, and summoned Ookiep to surrender.  Colonel Shelton, who commanded the small garrison, sent an uncompromising reply, but he was unable to protect the railway in his rear, which was wrecked, together with some of the blockhouses which had been erected to guard it.  The loyal population of the surrounding country had flocked into