After a decade of this sort of intermittent struggle, however, the Boers were encouraged by familiarity with that part of the Basuto country which lay in the valleys and fields to try the task of storming some of the strongholds of the enemy. With the aid of a few small cannon, the first attempts were successful and surprisingly easy. Thus encouraged, within the three years following 1865, the greater part of Basutoland was overrun and the best cornfields captured. They were promptly "annexed" to the Free State, and then attention was devoted to the French missionaries, who had, meanwhile, been doing a splendid work amongst the natives. They were turned out of the country in which half a million of dollars had been expended upon their stations; their homes were plundered and the private property of men who had, in some cases, been laboring for thirty years in the region was confiscated; furniture, books and other items of value were destroyed, and all redress was refused. Permission was afterwards given to re-occupy their stations, not as such, but as farms for which $500 was in each case to be paid the Boer Government. Much of the conquered territory was also surveyed and sold. But the power of the Boers was a very fitful one. With a weak Government at home they were unable to hold the regions which they captured from time to time, and the result was a re-occupation by the Basutos, an attempt to cultivate their fields, further reprisals, and more attacks upon the mountain strongholds. Upon one occasion the Boers destroyed all the growing crops of an extensive section. But Thaba Bosigo, the central fortress of the country, could not be subdued by any force available. [Illustration: AN ARMORED TRAIN SHELLING A BOER BATTERY AT NIGHT.] [Illustration: BOERS CROSSING THE MALMANI FORD NEAR MAFEKING] [Sidenote: Basutoland under British Rule]