What Cronje had failed to do, Snyman could hardly be expected to accomplish with a considerably reduced force, and the attack became more faint-hearted. He carried out the Cronje policy of comfortable, lethargic squatting, doubting not that the place must fall into his hands sooner or later. Friends and relations tripped over from Johannesburg to admire and encourage his brave burghers at their posts, and some were even allowed as a treat to fire a shot at the Khakis. No serious operation occurred until the end of the year. On the morrow of Christmas Day, Baden-Powell made an unsuccessful attempt to carry a fort on Game Tree Hill, which commanded the approach to the town from the north. He was unaware of its strength, and the casualties amounted to nearly one-fifth of the force engaged, a loss which he could ill afford; but early in January he compelled the big gun, which could neither face the shells of his little battery of 7-pounders nor the rifles of his marksmen, to withdraw to a more distant emplacement east of the town. Towards the end of the month an encouraging message was received from Lord Roberts at Capetown. The Boer line of circumvallation was in plan an irregular hexagon, of which the north-east face was pushed inwards and a re-entrant angle formed at the Brickfields; where a fort was built nearer to the town than any other post of the attack, and the operations during February and March were mainly a struggle for the possession of it. After several weeks of sapping and counter sapping, the Boers, though supported by the fire of the big gun in its new emplacement, were expelled from the Brickfields on March 23. April was marked by the final withdrawal of the big gun, which, after a heavy bombardment on the 11th, was sent away to Pretoria; and by the appearance of young Eloff, fresh from the capital, with instructions to do what he could to stimulate the attack, for once in a way, into real activity. More than a fortnight elapsed before he succeeded. Snyman gave him little encouragement, but could not oppose a mandate from Kruger, Eloff's grandfather. The Molopo River, after passing south of the town, runs through the only weak place in the defence, the native location, which during the first few days of the siege had been attacked without result by Cronje. Westward of it the steep banks of the river afford a covered way of access to the thickly clustered huts lying within the perimeter of the defence, which Eloff saw might be turned if he got a footing among them.