This system was devised when it was realised that British “flying columns”, composed mainly of infantry, with guns, field hospitals, engineers and a cumbersome train of ox wagons, were hardly that. De Wet ordered that these columns should not be opposed and the burghers ran few risks of capture for the British had very few mounted men. The British walked where they liked and the Boers rode where they pleased. Boer attacks on weak points and the railways continued. The campaign might have continued for ten years had some new way of countering the fleet-footed Boers not been evolved.