Major Welch, a soldier of great promise, much beloved by his men, was one of the slain.

Following closely after the repulse at Frederickstad this action was a heavy blow to De Wet.

At last, the British were beginning to take something off the score which they owed the bold raider, but there was to be many an item on either side before the long reckoning should be closed.

The Boers, with De Wet, fled south, where it was not long before they showed that they were still a military force with which we had to reckon.
In defiance of chronology it may perhaps make a clearer narrative if I continue at once with the movements of De Wet from the time that he lost his guns at Bothaville, and then come back to the consideration of the campaign in the Transvaal, and to a short account of those scattered and disconnected actions which break the continuity of the story.

Before following De Wet, however, it is necessary to say something of the general state of the Orange River Colony and of some military developments which had occurred there.