A concerted movement against the invaders was being rapidly organised, and quantities of separate columns under General Settle, each in touch with the other and moving simultaneously, were to sweep clear the country and wipe off the Boers from the neighbourhood of Matjesfontein and Calvinia, whither Hertzog's commando had penetrated. At Matjesfontein Colonel Henniker's troops formed the centre of a semicircle, travelling left in the direction where Thorneycroft's and Bethune's forces operated, and bending coastwards were De Lisle and his nimble men who kept guard over the loopholes to the sea whence supplies might be drawn. The passes in the hills, of this the most difficult and mountainous country, were held by the Cape Town Cyclist Corps, together with the Western Province, Scottish and Welsh Horse, while the Australians patrolled around Lamberts and Bast, Clanwilliam and the coast, and took care the enemy found no means of squeezing to the left. There was little chance of a complete cessation of hostilities for a good time to come, for the Dutchmen were cunning, and having discovered that their wives and children were so humanely provided for, considered themselves free to keep the field with increased persistence. That they were not unsuccessful in their machinations was due to the fact that they carefully eluded the British troops, and were fed and cared for at the expense of the country people who kept them well informed as to the manoeuvres of their pursuers. Meanwhile Hertzog was beating up recruits and scouring districts known to be disaffected for hale and hearty bachelors who would share the life of the marauders. But martial law having been proclaimed there was no great rush to his banner, though from the attitude, laudatory and almost reverential, of the farmers towards De Wet and his exploits, it was plain that, should he succeed in eluding Knox and breaking south, he might end by fizzing comet-wise through the Colony with a trail of rebels at his heels. In the Transvaal Botha's followers, to the strength of 3000, were concentrated near Carolina, while others of the gang hovered round Johannesburg and Standerton. On the 17th, from this latter place, they were driven off with loss by Colonel Colville's mobile column, and their discomfiture was completed by the seizure by the Johannesburg Mounted Rifles of a Boer outpost near Springs. They scored, however, by capturing a train with mine materials near Balmoral, and also by damaging, on the 22nd, the electric light work near Johannesburg. Lord Methuen, meanwhile, was clearing the Boers out of Kuruman and Griqualand.