nature of the Boer movement when that movement has taken place. Down the serried lines of armed Dutchmen old Piet Cronje, as his friends call him, or General Cronje, as a sycophantian Boer press describe him, rode. He was a gallant sight--albeit we could only just see him some two thousand yards distant. After a temporary and casual inspection of his force, General Cronje turned his head towards Mafeking, and waving violently one arm in the air, cantered with much solemn apprehension towards our trenches. He had covered in this desperate effort some thirty yards, when perhaps a natural superstition caused him to turn his head. Was there a man dismayed in the Boer lines? Not one; but nevertheless, they were not taking any such manoeuvre just then. Cronje stopped and cantered back again, seeming to hold an indaba with his petty officers. They gathered round him, they talked to him, pointing towards their lines, and shouting at one another; but there it ended. In a little while we saw a silent figure, moody and taciturn, guarded by two orderlies, ride slowly around from the east front to the headquarters of the executive on the south-west. Thus Cronje failed, not through any fault of his, but because the idle braggarts who form his army have not the spirit of whipped curs. Since then Cronje has made no effort to storm Mafeking, and it is very much to be doubted whether until the siege be raised the attempt will be renewed. One must sympathise a little with Cronje since he has not been able to sustain in his attack upon Mafeking the high reputation which he enjoys among his countrymen. Now that he has been recalled to Natal, we here hope that he may be able to find some opportunity to distinguish himself. His force without Mafeking is a raw, lawless body of Western Boers, the majority of whom have followed him on his march. We say Natal, but there is no very positive ground for believing that it is in that direction that the new field of his activity lies. It may be that he has gone South, and if such should happen to be the case, it will not be long before he will come in contact with men who will test his mettle to the utmost. There have been many rumours of reinforcements: some people, addicted with a greater faculty of imagination than power of veracity, have even seen the advanced outposts of the relief, which, of course, is ridiculous. They mistake some scattered party of Boers for advanced scouts. We do not think that there is much real chance of the siege of Mafeking being raised before the New Year, since such would be opposed to the stately and insular procedure of the Imperial and Colonial War Offices. Hitherto it has apparently ignored the claims of Mafeking. All conditions of people here united in their efforts to secure some more or less reliable armament from the Government, but the reason, above all others, which made this impossible was that the Imperial authorities