life among the Boers, considered the latter estimate to be too
high. The calculation had no assured basis to start from. A very
scattered and isolated population, among whom large families were
the rule, is a most difficult thing to estimate. Some reckoned from
the supposed natural increase during eighteen years, but the figure
given at that date was itself an assumption. Others took their
calculation from the number of voters in the last presidential
election: but no one could tell how many abstentions there had
been, and the fighting age is five years earlier than the voting
age in the republics. We recognise now that all calculations were
far below the true figure. It is probable, however, that the
information of the British Intelligence Department was not far
wrong. According to this the fighting strength of the Transvaal
alone was 32,000 men, and of the Orange Free State 22,000. With
mercenaries and rebels from the colonies they would amount to 60,
000, while a considerable rising of the Cape Dutch would bring them
up to 100,000. In artillery they were known to have about a hundred
guns, many of them (and the fact will need much explaining) more
modern and powerful than any which we could bring against them. Of
the quality of this large force there is no need to speak. The men
were brave, hardy, and fired with a strange religious enthusiasm.
They were all of the seventeenth century, except their rifles.
Mounted upon their hardy little ponies, they possessed a mobility
which practically doubled their numbers and made it an
impossibility ever to outflank them. As marksmen they were supreme.
Add to this that they had the advantage of acting upon internal
lines with shorter and safer communications, and one gathers how
formidable a task lay before the soldiers of the empire. When we
turn from such an enumeration of their strength to contemplate the
12,000 men, split into two detachments, who awaited them in Natal,