The De Wet country had been pretty well cleared by the series of drives which have already been described, and Louis Botha’s force in the Eastern Transvaal had been much diminished by the tactics of Bruce Hamilton and Wools-Sampson.  Lord Kitchener was able, therefore, to concentrate his troops and his attention upon that wide-spread western area in which General De la Rey had dealt two such shrewd blows within a few weeks of each other.  Troops were rapidly concentrated at Klerksdorp.  Kekewich, Walter Kitchener, Rawlinson, and Rochfort, with a number of small columns, were ready in the third week of March to endeavour to avenge Lord Methuen.

The problem with which Lord Kitchener was confronted was a very difficult one, and he has never shown more originality and audacity than in the fashion in which he handled it.  De la Rey’s force was scattered over a long tract of country, capable of rapidly concentrating for a blow, but otherwise as intangible and elusive as a phantom army.  Were Lord Kitchener simply to launch ten thousand horsemen at him, the result would be a weary ride over illimitable plains without sight of a Boer, unless it were a distant scout upon the extreme horizon.  De la Rey and his men would have slipped away to his northern hiding-places beyond the Marico River.  There was no solid obstacle here, as in the Orange River Colony, against which the flying enemy could be rounded up.  One line of blockhouses there was, it is true—­the one called the Schoonspruit cordon, which flanked the De la Rey country.  It flanked it, however, upon the same side as that on which the troops were assembled.  If the troops were only on the other side, and De la Rey was between them and the blockhouse line, then, indeed, something might be done.  But to place the troops there, and then bring them instantly back again, was to put such a strain upon men and horses as had never yet been done upon a large scale in the course of the war.  Yet Lord Kitchener knew the mettle of the men whom he commanded, and he was aware that there were no exertions of which the human frame is capable which he might not confidently demand.

The precise location of the Boer laagers does not appear to have been known, but it was certain that a considerable number of them were scattered about thirty miles or so to the west of Klerksdorp and the Schoonspruit line.  The plan was to march a British force right through them, then spread out into a wide line and come straight back, driving the burghers on to the cordon of blockhouses, which had been strengthened by the arrival of three regiments of Highlanders.  But to get to the other side of the Boers it was necessary to march the columns through by night.  It was a hazardous operation, but the secret was well kept, and the movement was so well carried out that the enemy had no time to check it.  On the night of Sunday, March 23rd, the British horsemen passed stealthily in column through the De la Rey country, and then,