n. Six batteries of artillery were massed in the centre under
Colonel Downing. French with the cavalry and mounted infantry was on the
extreme right, but found little opportunity for the use of the mounted
arm that day.

The Boer position, so far as it could be seen, was a formidable one.
Their centre lay upon one of the spurs of Signal Hill, about three miles
from the town. Here they had two forty-pounders and three other lighter
guns, but their artillery strength developed both in numbers and in
weight of metal as the day wore on. Of their dispositions little could
be seen. An observer looking westward might discern with his glass
sprays of mounted riflemen galloping here and there over the downs,
and possibly small groups where the gunners stood by their guns, or the
leaders gazed down at that town which they were destined to have in view
for such a weary while. On the dun-coloured plains before the town, the
long thin lines, with an occasional shifting sparkle of steel, showed
where Hamilton's and Grimwood's infantry were advancing. In the clear
cold air of an African morning every detail could be seen, down to the
distant smoke of a train toiling up the heavy grades which lead from
Frere over the Colenso Bridge to Ladysmith.

The scrambling, inconsequential, unsatisfactory action which ensued is
as difficult to describe as it must have been to direct. The Boer
front covered some seven or eight miles, with kopjes, like chains of
fortresses, between. They formed a huge semicircle of which our advance
was the chord, and they were able from this position to pour in
a converging artillery fire which grew steadily hotter as the day
advanced. In the early part of the day our forty-two guns, working
furiously, though with a want of accuracy which may be due to those
errors of refraction which are said to be common in the limpid air of
the veld, preserved their superiority. There appears to have been a want
of concentration about our fire, and at some periods of the action
each particular battery was firing at some different point of the Boer
half-circle. Sometimes for an hour on end the Boer reply would die
away altogether, only to break out with augmented violence, and with
an accuracy which increased our respect for their training. Huge
shells--the largest that ever burst upon a battlefield--hurled from
distances which were unattainable by our fifteen-pounders, enveloped our
batteries in smoke and flame. One enormous Cr