From the 12th to the 22nd of May was spent by the main army, at Kroonstad, where, owing to sickness and other causes, a halt was obligatory. It was necessary that supplies should be collected, an advanced depôt formed, the railway repaired, and the safety of both flanks secured. Meanwhile, efforts were made to protect the farmers who had surrendered from the revengeful tactics of the Boers. Lord Lovat's gillies arrived at Kroonstad and met with the approval of the Commander-in-Chief. General Hutton, with a force of mounted infantry, had reported an attack on Bothaville and the capture of three commandants and about a score of Zarps, from their hiding-place near Smaldeel. On the 20th, the 1st Cavalry Brigade marched out from their camp near Kroonstad, to open up the country on the left of Lord Roberts's main advance along the western fringe of the railway. They were accompanied by the 4th Cavalry Brigade (7th Dragoon Guards and 8th and 14th Hussars), and supported by General Hutton's Brigade of Mounted Infantry (Canadians, Australians, and New Zealanders). On the 21st, the cavalry seized the drift at the confluence of the Honing Spruit and the Rhenoster; and on the 22nd, Lord Roberts and the main army, leaving only the 1st Suffolks behind, marched from Kroonstad to Honing Spruit, the third station to the north, and some eighteen or twenty miles off. General Ian Hamilton, after a series of engagements with De Wet's hordes, from Lindley, onwards, had secured an advanced position at Heilbron, while the cavalry division had moved up, crossed the Rhenoster River, and threatening the right rear of the enemy had forced the Dutchmen to leave a strongly-entrenched position on the north bank of the river. The presence of French and Hamilton to west and east of them had served to unnerve the hostile hordes, who now had our cavalry within twenty miles of either flank. They spent their bellicose ardour by destroying some miles of railway, the bridge over the Rhenoster, and some culverts, and then flying in hot haste before the vast machinery of the advancing army, to a new point of defence some twenty miles in front, a point which promised shortly to become equally untenable. [Illustration: THE GREAT ADVANCE: ROYAL HORSE ARTILLERY (CAVALRY DIVISION) CROSSING THE VAAL Drawing by R. Caton Woodville] The following casualties took place in the Winburg Column, May 21st:--New South Wales Mounted Infantry--Wounded severely, Lieutenant A. J. M. Onslow, 1st Royal Irish--Lieutenant M. H. E. Welch.