Having fired enough shells to have killed each man at least five times, then General Paget advanced his lines and the rifles came into play. Time and again these lines were driven back, and the last time they advanced to within fifty yards of the Irish boys. Didn't they keep the air filled with steel and didn't they do good work? Well, I guess they did. The English were driven back once more all along the line and did not try again. General Viljoen's men had used up almost all their ammunition and could not have repelled another advance. At night he retired a few miles back, in the hope of meeting his ammunition wagons, which were already due to arrive. General Paget was satisfied. He had had enough and made no further attempt to molest General Viljoen and the Johannesburg boys. A board over one pit accounts for seventeen officers. The other pits bear no mark, so it is not yet known how many men were killed. However, the slaughter was so terrible, and General Paget so terribly thrashed, that he was relieved and sent home. Had he simply made a feint on General Viljoen's right flank the latter would have been forced to retreat without fighting, but it never occurred to General Paget for he was so sure that his frontal attack would be successful. General Viljoen lost three men killed and two wounded, and taught the English that the demoralized Boers were still able to defeat the disciplined English army. [Illustration: Dr. Nethling GENERAL BEN VILJOEN Docks Young. And some of his Commandants and Veldtcornets.] It was about this time that Lord Kitchener's proclamations and orders for the burning and destruction of Boer farms was given. The English visited, and destroyed in the end every farm, both in the Transvaal and in the Free State. All fences, crops, agricultural implements and soforth were destroyed. Even the towns of Dulstroom, Carolina, Ermelo, Bethel, Piet Retief, and many others were razed to the ground. Churches were torn down and the corner stones robbed of old church papers. Some of these papers were afterwards advertised for sale at fabulous prices. It was not until November, 1901, that this burning and destruction of property was completed, and the whole country left as a desert waste. On searching a farm house the officer in command would give the family ten minutes to get out what they could, but would at once spread the oil around and then apply the torch. All fowls, pigs, sheep and cows would either be shot down or driven off, and then without a mouthful of food, without shelter or clothing, the women and children would be left to starve to death on the veldt. _I do not believe that in the history of the world, one could find more acts of barbarity and brutality committed by any people in any land than by the English in the two little republics of the Transvaal and the Free State._