At about 4 P.M. the enemy’s fire began to dwindle, and eventually ceased altogether, and just as we meditated leaving our ridge to cross over to theirs our Infantry became visible, advancing from westward along the ridge which the enemy had occupied, while to our right front, some two miles off, more British Infantry appeared on the sky line, showing that the Boer position had been quitted. At this period our Brigadier’s orders came for us to retire from the kopje and make our bivouac for the night somewhere on the plain below. June 5 was the day on which we reached the goal we had been struggling for. Pretoria at last, not fighting our way in, as anticipated by everybody, but forming a peaceful procession, with our baggage behind us, news having arrived that the Governor had surrendered the town late the previous night. We were not allowed to halt, but just passed through the city and out to Irene, a station ten miles south of Pretoria and on the Johannesburg line, which we at present occupy, the whole corps protecting the rail from Pretoria to Johannesburg. ----- Footnote 9: Hindustani for ‘fowls.’—ED. Footnote 10: Hindustani for ‘orders.’—ED. Footnote 11: Hindustani for ‘blunder.’—ED. Footnote 12: See Appendix IV.—ED. ----- CHAPTER XIII _ON LINES OF COMMUNICATION AT IRENE, KALFONTEIN, ZURFONTEIN, AND SPRINGS—THE PRETORIA PAPER-CHASE_ That march through Pretoria, marked by none of the pomp and pageantry which imagination conjures up as essential features of a great triumph, must have seemed a lame and impotent conclusion to the stirring drama of real life in which Lumsden’s Horse had played their manful part, cheered always by the prospect of a glorious reward for all their struggles, hardships, and sacrifices in the final downfall of Boer power when the Transvaal capital should be in our hands. They were not the only people who entertained such sanguine hopes and felt proportionally disappointed at the inadequate realisation. For nearly every soldier at that time in South Africa, from Lord Roberts downwards, Pretoria had been the goal, and its conquest the climax beyond which no operations of serious importance could possibly be called for. Few people, if any, realised then how little value Boers attach to great towns as strategical bases. With the capture of Johannesburg and Pretoria we had theoretically all their arsenals and main lines of communication in our hands, and according to all hard-and-fast rules of warfare the campaign should have ended then. That impression was certainly strong on the Commander-in-Chief’s mind shortly before dusk of June 4, when Colonel De Lisle, whose Mounted Infantry had followed the enemy to within 2,000 yards of Pretoria, sent an officer under a flag of truce to demand the surrender of the town. The end might possibly have come then, if,