The Boers were never able to tolerate that kind of advance, and finding that rifles would not stop the Highlanders, they hastily retreated, and soon afterwards General Ian Hamilton rode over to congratulate the battalion on their exploit. Lord Roberts was not long in sending his praise. “Tell the Gordons,” he wrote, “that I am proud to think that I have a Highlander as one of the supporters of my coat-of-arms.” During this action the fourth Victoria Cross was given to the Gordons, being awarded to Corporal Mackay, who “repeatedly rushed forward under a withering fire at short range to attend to wounded comrades, dressing the wounds, while he himself was without shelter, and in one instance carrying a wounded man from the open under a heavy fire to the shelter of a boulder.” On May 31 the Union Jack flew over Johannesburg. At this point General French arrived, and as senior officer took command. General Sir Ian Hamilton then thanked the Gordons, “the, regiment my father commanded and I was born in,” for their support. On June 3 the army set out for Pretoria, when suddenly the whole contemplated resistance of the Boers faded away like smoke. President Kruger, not forgetting two millions of money, but leaving his wife instead, hurried to Delagoa Bay, and with his departure came the unconditional surrender of Pretoria. It had been a long and arduous march, covering forty-five days and some four hundred miles of country. The Highlanders engaged in nine actions, and occupied five towns. It must have been a dramatic and inspiring spectacle to see the Gordons and the Camerons, gaunt and lean with all the fatigue through which they had passed, in tattered clothes and soleless boots, marching into the Boer capital. It might have been thought that the fall of Pretoria would have brought with it the conclusion of the Boer War. But the fall of Pretoria held no special significance to the Boers. Many of them had probably never seen the town, and took no interest in it. They resorted to a manner of warfare peculiarly suited to their habits of life, and which, developing over an extensive country, threatened a hopeless stalemate. They hoped by a guerilla warfare to weary the British forces into a favourable peace. From this point to the end of the war that agile leader De Wet was to make his name familiar as a kind of military will-o’-the-wisp. Every week brought with it news of some minor engagement in some isolated part of the country. Here a position had been attacked or there a convoy had been seized. Often it was a raid on the long line of railway running from Capetown to Pretoria, but always De Wet, despite the efforts of the British, would manage to elude capture and fling his burghers upon another part of our lines.