In the north-eastern and northern districts--for instance, in Ladybrand, Winburg, Kroonstad, Heilbron, Bethlehem, Harrismith and Vrede--there were still many families, and these could not be sent to Boshof or to Hoopstad or to the Colony.

And when, reduced to dire want, the commandos should be obliged to abandon these districts, their wives and families would have to be left behind--to starve! The condition of affairs in the Transvaal was no better.

We Free-Staters had thought--and I, for one, had supported the view at Vereeniging--that, before sacrificing our independence, we ought to tell the owners of these farms, where there were still women and children, to go and surrender with their families, and thus save them from starvation.

But we soon realized that such a course was not practicable--it would involve the loss of too many burghers.
Moreover, even if, by some such scheme as this, we had succeeded in saving the women, we, who remained in the field, would still have been exposed to the dangers of starvation, for many of us, having no horses, could not have left want behind us, by removing to Cape Colony or some other equally prosperous region.
In the large eastern divisions of the Transvaal also, there were many burghers without horses, while the poor jaded creatures that remained were far too feeble and exhausted to carry their masters into Cape Colony, without the certainty of being captured by the enemy.
Our forces were now only twenty thousand in all, of which the Transvaal supplied ten thousand, the Free State six thousand, while the remainder came from Cape Colony.

But our numerical weakness would not in itself have caused us to abandon the struggle had we but received encouraging news from the Colony.