SOUTH AFRICA. 



029 



Saigon was restored. The territory ceded to 

 France has a total area of 7,750 square miles. 



SOUTH AFRICA. With the conquest of the 

 two Boer republics the whole of South Africa 

 becomes British territory, with the exception of 

 the coast regions belonging to Portugal in the 

 east and west and the unproductive sphere of 

 Germany in the southwest. British South Africa, 

 thus expanded, has an area of about 1,000,000 

 square miles, of which 700,000 square miles are 

 south of the Zambesi, for the most part already 

 provided with civilized institutions, and 300,000 

 square miles are a promising region of great natu- 

 ral agricultural and mineral resources extending 

 from the Zambesi northward to the boundaries 

 of German East Africa and the Congo . Inde- 

 pendent State. The High Commissioner for Brit- 

 ish South Africa is Lord Milner. 



Final Campaign. At the beginning of 1902 

 the theater of the war still extended over the 

 length and breadth of British South Africa ex- 

 cepting the coast regions and populous parts of 

 Cape Colony and Natal, a circuit of about 40 

 miles radius around Bloemfontein, and the culti- 

 vated districts surrounding Pretoria and Johan- 

 nesburg as far west as Rustenburg. The British 

 had garrisons in all the considerable towns of 

 the late republics and occupied the railroads so 

 effectually that the Boers could no longer derail 

 trains and help themselves to supplies on the 

 principal lines of communication. The main line 

 from Cape Colony was so effectually guarded by 

 blockhouses and constabulary posts, connected 

 with barbed-wire fencing, with trenches dug on 

 both sides of the track in the threatened por- 

 tions and spring guns and automatic electric- 

 alarm signals, that the Boers could no longer 

 cross it in large parties at any point between 

 Pretoria and Bloemfontein or south of there. 

 Lord Kitchener had ceased active operations 

 while extending the blockhouse system not 

 only along the railroads but east and west to 

 garrisoned posts away from the railroads. All 

 the 2,300 miles of railroads were blockhoused, 

 but only completely enough to prevent Boers 

 from crossing in che important sections separa- 

 ting the districts still held by the Boers. Con- 

 stabulary posts of from 50 to 100 men were es- 

 tablished along the railroads 5 or 6 miles apart, 

 with 4 or more blockhouses around the circum- 

 ference and an entrenched position for the gar- 

 rison and horses in the center. These posts were 

 connected by a chain of blockhouses manned by 

 from 7 to 16 men, set at intervals of from 700 

 to 2,000 yards. The blockhouses, of corrugated 

 iron, were strengthened by bags of earth and pro- 

 tected by spider-web entanglements of barbed 

 wire and trenches. When these were completed 

 trenches were dug from blockhouse to blockhouse 

 and barbed wire stretched between them. More 

 strongly garrisoned than the constabulary posts, 

 but with unmounted troops for defense only, 

 were the stations placed at sufficient intervals 

 from which were distributed rations, water, and 

 ammunition along the line and where convoys 

 halted at night on the lines stretching away from 

 the railroads, which were safe lines of communi- 

 cation by day. Along the Bloemfontein-Pretoria 

 Railroad the country was safe by day for 10 

 miles on each side of the line. The lines of posts 

 erected away from railroads proceeded rapidly 

 in the beginning, and more slowly as the distance 

 from the base increased, because materials and 

 supplies had to be transported by ox-teams, and 

 these were scarce. 



The Boers had undisputed possession of the 

 great quadrilateral in the eastern Orange Free 



State from Frankfort on the north to Bethlehem 

 on the south, and from Lindley on the west to 

 Botha's pass on the east. This area the British 

 proceeded to enclose with lines of blockhouses. 

 Away from the blockhouse lines the Boers 

 roamed at will and could concentrate 1,000 men 

 or more at any point north of Basutoland, and 

 the British could only move in large bodies. In 

 the western Transvaal the region between Klerks-, 

 dorp and Vryburg was Boer country. In the 

 southeastern Transvaal, east of the strong block- 

 house line running from the Natal to the Lou- 

 rengo Marques Railroad the Boers under Com- 

 mandant-General Louis Botha held the country 

 undisputed. A line of blockhouses from Wakker- 

 stroom to Piet Retief was intended to protect 

 northern Natal and Zululand from their raids. 

 In the northwestern Transvaal the British held 

 the Magaliesberg range as well as the Pretoria- 

 Rustenburg Railroad by numerous blockhouses. 

 From Rustenburg and Zeerust northward the pos- 

 session of the country by the Boers was not yet 

 challenged, and there their most considerable force 

 was still a coherent and disciplined body under 

 the chief command of Gen. Delarey, while Gen. 

 Christian de Wet was in the eastern part of the 

 Orange Free State. Throughout the whole north- 

 eastern Transvaal north of the Delagoa Bay Rail- 

 road the Boers were left undisturbed, and they 

 were numerous and busy, though not with direct- 

 ly hostile operations. These were not the fight- 

 ing Boers, but the ones who supplied the fighting 

 forces with food, clothing, and such war material 

 as could be manufactured in the country. In 

 the fertile valley north of Lydenburg they raised 

 grain enough to feed their entire army and 

 ground it into flour at Pilgrim's Rest and, after 

 their mill was blown up by treachery, at Sabie 

 Drift. A blockhouse line was being carried from 

 Klerksdorp through Ventersdorp to the Rusten- 

 burg line to protect the Rand from raids, and it 

 extended across the Vaal to KronstadT When 

 the completion of the line was of urgent neces- 

 sity the blockhouses were placed wider apart, 

 leaving the intervening ones and the fencing to 

 be filled in later. The Vaal river from Klerks- 

 dorp to Standerton was lightly guarded with a 

 long blockhouse line. A transverse line crossed 

 the railroad in the Orange River Colony from 

 Winburg to Bloemhof ; one passed through Thaba 

 Nchu to Maseru on the border of Basutoland, 

 and through Ladybrand to Ficksburg; beyond 

 these there was one connecting Fouriesburg with 

 Bethlehem. There was a network no longer need- 

 ed in the northern parts of Cape Colony, though 

 bands of rebels were still at large in the hilly 

 country north of Cradock and on the borders 

 of Basutoland and Caffraria: in the west of Cape 

 Colony, where the rebels were still active, a long 

 line, stretched from Lambert's Bay to Victoria 

 West on the railroad, protected the settled dis- 

 tricts; and the railroad was well protected north- 

 ward to Kimberley, and even to Vryburg and 

 Mafeking, and lightly farther north, with lines 

 crossing the country "from Kimberley to Boshof 

 and from Jakobsdal along the Riet to the cleared 

 country about Bloemfontein. This cleared region, 

 protected at first by the South African constab- 

 ulary, was left principally to the national scouts, 

 a body recruited by ex-commandants among sur- 

 rendered Boers who wished to bring pressure 

 upon the leaders still in the field to induce these 

 to abandon what the Boers who had accepted 

 British sovereignty at various times since the fall 

 of Bloemfontein and Pretoria, contemptuously 

 called " handups " by the others, considered a 

 hopeless struggle that was ruining and extermi- 



