Before presenting as a connected whole the separate descriptions dealing with a movement which had for its object the disintegration of Boer forces that still held the high veldt and thus threatened both railway lines east of Johannesburg, it will be well to summarise briefly the experience of troopers under Captain Beresford’s command while separated from the headquarters of their corps. It will be remembered that when General Mahon set out from Pretoria to join General French in his dash on Barberton more than two-thirds of Lumsden’s Horse were left behind waiting for remounts, with instructions to follow as fast as possible, or as soon as General Cunningham, under whose orders they were placed for a time, might permit. What happened then is especially interesting as evidence of the class of horse that was being issued to mounted troops at that stage for operations against an exceedingly mobile enemy. The Boers were then practically nomads, having no fixed bases from which supplies were drawn, and therefore no lines of communication to be cut. Pursuit of them was therefore very much like hunting a fox that has been driven out of his own familiar country. If he runs the pack ‘out of scent,’ there is nothing to serve as a guide for the casts that may be made in hope of hitting off the line again, for nobody can say what the probable ‘point’ is; and unless he can be brought to hand by a pursuit that never tires and never goes wrong, we may be sure that there is no chance of running him to ground. Most of the Boer leaders at that time had their wives and families with them. Mrs. De la Rey had been living in an ox-waggon, without fixed abode, since the beginning of war, and accompanying her husband on every trek from Magersfontein to Colesberg, and thence in succession to Driefontein, Brandfort, Kroonstad, the Vaal River, then on to meet Mahon’s column south of Mafeking, back in haste for the defence of Johannesburg and Pretoria, from there to Diamond Hill (or Rietfontein as the Boers call it), then back northward through the bushveldt, and so to the Magaliesberg Range again. Against an enemy thus independent of railways or beaten tracks none but well-mounted troops with horses in the best of condition could hope to achieve much. For corps in the same plight as Lumsden’s Horse, however, nothing better could be found than under-bred Argentines or weedy Hungarians, gross from the combined effects of idleness and injudicious feeding, and soft from want of exercise, badly broken, and therefore ill-mannered. One trooper, whose comments are based on actual experience, as he was among the men to whom horses were issued for trial, only on the morning of the day when they marched from Pretoria, writes of the ‘strange exhibitions’ with this lot of remounts which, to put it mildly, had not been ridden much before. ‘They were just off the ship, fat and very soft, and full of beans. One fellow was bucked off, another dragged, and several very uncomfortable.