into three, and rising betimes, in the thick mists of daybreak, on the 6th, he delivered a vigorous semicircular attack upon the camp. This was successfully repulsed. The Boers lost heavily, General Spruyt and several field-cornets being among the slain. The British had one officer and twenty-three men killed, three officers and fifty-two men wounded. Some 300 horses were killed or stampeded during the surprise. The Boers, owing to the heavy fog of the morning, got away to the north. At the moment Botha was making his attack on the camp, the officer bearing orders from General French for General Smith-Dorrien, after an exciting and hazardous ride, reached Bothwell. Owing to the fight these orders--to move on the 6th to a position E.N.E. of Ermelo--could then not be executed. General Smith-Dorrien therefore remained at Bothwell. Meanwhile, in the south, fighting went forward. Colonel Allenby, who had been rapidly pushing east, came on the enemy's rearguard, which was occupying a ridge south of Ermelo. With infantry and artillery, and supported by Dartnell's Brigade, he engaged them, holding them on the west while the mounted troops endeavoured to wheel round the southern flank and surround them. But the Boers, who had had a long start, nimbly made good their escape over the Vaal at Witpunt before Allenby's troops could possibly reach that point, and consequently the brilliant attempt to cut off their retreat proved a failure. Ermelo was occupied on the 6th, and thus the first phase of the operations was accomplished. * * * * * It was now necessary to sweep the country from Ermelo to the Swazi frontier, which movement occupied from the 9th to the 16th of February. To this end the flanks were immediately opened out again, and the line Bothwell-Ermelo-Amersfoort taken. From this line the force wheeled half-right, the left flank (rationed on reduced scale up to the 20th) beginning to extend east towards Swaziland on the 9th. The whole force was now so ordered as to form a complete cordon for the purpose of hemming in the enemy and their belongings in the south-eastern corner of the Transvaal. The troops were here to converge on Amsterdam and Piet Retief from north and south-west, and, with the escort to the convoy from Utrecht, were to form a line from Utrecht and the Natal frontier to the Swazi frontier north of Piet Retief. On the 9th General Smith-Dorrien, moving east-north-east, encountered the Boers, and Colonel Mackenzie and his gallant men, with the assistance of the 2nd Imperial Light Horse, succeeded in capturing a convoy and putting twenty-one Boers _hors de combat_ by a brilliant charge.