It was possible to
deal a blow that took effect. Now we are fighting shadows. Our columns
march through the country and see no enemy, or at most only a few small
parties hovering on the sky-line. Scouts and patrols are often engaged,
and no one can wander out of sight of the column but the ugly voice of a
Mauser will warn him back. Invisible eyes watch us all the time, ready
to take advantage of detached parties or unprotected convoys. We are
teased and annoyed, but never definitely engaged. We are like the
traveller and the gnats--
"Nor could my weak arm disperse
The host of insects gathered round my head,
And ever with me as I walked along."
Carried on in a country like this, where a man on horseback is like a
bird in the air, and by people so individually keen as the Boers, the
present kind of war may go on indefinitely. After all, it is the sort of
war the Boers understand best. The big-battle war is a matter of science
which he had in a great measure to be instructed in, but this is a war
which the natural independence of his own character and self-reliant
habits make natural to him. The war, now that it has become a matter of
individuals, is exciting all its old enthusiasm again, and the Burghers
are up in arms in every district in the country. Fighting in their own
country, the Boers have one advantage over us, which is their salvation:
they can disperse in flight, but we cannot disperse in pursuit.
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