The news from South Africa continues unsensational, but for all
that there is real progress. The chief item of importance is that De Wet, though not caught, has been headed off from the region north-east of Pretoria, where he hoped to join Botha, and has been obliged to make a plunge back into the Orange River Colony. His condition can best be described in Lord Roberts's own words, given in a telegram in Friday's morning papers. De Wet, he tells us, will arrive in the Orange River Colony "in a very different condition from that in which he started from Bethlehem. Then he had sax or eight guns and some 2,000 men with him, and left Prinaloo with 5,000 or 6,000 in the Bethlehem hills ; between 4,000 and 5,000 of these are on their way to Ceylon, the guns have mostly been buried, and De Wet's personal following cannot amount to much more than 300." President Steyn, with a small bodyguard, is, we are told, trying to join President Kruger. Meantime, General Buller is advancing slowly but surely on Machadodorp, and we do not doubt that before long we shall hear of him on the Delagoa Bay Railway. When once the Boer railway communications are cut with the sea, as they will be when we can take and hold Koomati Poort, the resistance of the Transvaal will be very nearly finished.
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