The new year begins well, for the burghers are determined to fight. They did not generally know, however, that their women and children were being murdered by wholesale, otherwise I am sure they would have stopped the war at once. The English columns made a desperate effort on the high veldt during January, and it was fighting here and there and everywhere every day. There was no rest for any one, and I think that General Botha was cornered every day, but he was never found in the corner. I was with Commandant Joacham Prinsloo and 120 men early in this month of January, and we camped by the Klip-Kopjes about six miles from Bronkhorst Spruit, a station on the Delagoa railway line. It was very warm and we were trying to shelter ourselves from the sun by hanging blankets on our rifles, when suddenly, about ten a.m., the English began to fire on us from some Kaffir kraals about 800 yards distant. Our horses were out grazing, but within five minutes all had caught their horses, saddled them, and were striking for the English. The English scouts left the kraals when they saw the Boers coming in a gallop. On reaching the kraals and kopjes near by, we discovered about 700 advancing. They tried at first to surround us, but grew frightened, because they saw the Boers were too determined, and all began to retreat. The Boers charged and the English fled with the Boers hot after them. This regiment of 700 men was the Scots Greys, and all were panic stricken. They were scattered in every direction, and making for the forts on the railway line. Before they found safety, however, the Boers had killed seven, wounded eighteen, captured twenty-three men and nearly sixty horses, bridles and saddles. The enemy really put up no fight at all, and when asked the reason, they said, "Our time is up in March, and we are not going to fight any more, for we are tired of it, and the English always manage to keep out of the fight." I merely mention this to show the feelings of some of the so-called Scotch regiments at this stage of the war. In the Free State they were constantly cornering General De Wet, and, although he was many times cornered, yet he was never captured. In Cape Colony the Boer commandants kept all the districts in great turmoil, and General French and his big army seemed helpless to do anything. Besides, the blockhouses were giving the English trouble too, for Commandant Alex Boshof was slipping up nightly and blowing them up with dynamite. This perfect little dare devil, with his equal, Captain John Shea, blew up fifty or sixty of them, and so terrorized the Tommies that they would not take chances in them at night. Now, the commandos could cross the lines easily, for the Tommies would lie in trenches and not shoot if the Boers let them alone.