efective intelligence, or from that caste feeling
which makes it hard for the professional soldier to recognise (in spite
of deplorable past experiences) a serious adversary in the mounted
farmer, it is certain that even while our papers were proclaiming that
this time, at least, we would not underrate our enemy, we were most
seriously underrating him. The northern third of Natal is as vulnerable
a military position as a player of kriegspiel could wish to have
submitted to him. It runs up into a thin angle, culminating at the apex
in a difficult pass, the ill-omened Laing's Nek, dominated by the
even more sinister bulk of Majuba. Each side of this angle is open to
invasion, the one from the Transvaal and the other from the Orange Free
State. A force up at the apex is in a perfect trap, for the mobile
enemy can flood into the country to the south of them, cut the line
of supplies, and throw up a series of entrenchments which would make
retreat a very difficult matter. Further down the country, at such
positions as Ladysmith or Dundee, the danger, though not so imminent,
is still an obvious one, unless the defending force is strong enough to
hold its own in the open field and mobile enough to prevent a mounted
enemy from getting round its flanks. To us, who are endowed with that
profound military wisdom which only comes with a knowledge of the event,
it is obvious that with a defending force which could not place more
than 12,000 men in the fighting line, the true defensible frontier was
the line of the Tugela. As a matter of fact, Ladysmith was chosen, a
place almost indefensible itself, as it is dominated by high hills in at
least two directions.

Such an event as the siege of the town appears never to have been
contemplated, as no guns of position were asked for or sent. In spite
of this, an amount of stores, which is said to have been valued at
more than a million of pounds, was dumped down at this small railway
junction, so that the position could not be evacuated without a
crippling loss. The place was the point of bifurcation of the main line,
which divides at this little town into one branch running to Harrismith
in the Orange Free State, and the other leading through the Dundee coal
fields and Newcastle to the Laing's Nek tunnel and the Transvaal. An
importance, which appears now to have been an exaggerated one, was
attached by the Government of Natal to the possession of the coal
fields, and it was at their stro