land was largely diverted into Natal in order in the first instance
to prevent the colony from being overrun, and in the second to rescue
the beleaguered garrison. In the meantime it is necessary to deal with
the military operations in the broad space between the eastern and
western armies.

After the declaration of war there was a period of some weeks during
which the position of the British over the whole of the northern part of
Cape Colony was full of danger. Immense supplies had been gathered at De
Aar which were at the mercy of a Free State raid, and the burghers, had
they possessed a cavalry leader with the dash of a Stuart or a Sheridan,
might have dealt a blow which would have cost us a million pounds' worth
of stores and dislocated the whole plan of campaign. However, the chance
was allowed to pass, and when, on November 1st, the burghers at last in
a leisurely fashion sauntered over the frontier, arrangements had been
made by reinforcement and by concentration to guard the vital points.
The objects of the British leaders, until the time for a general advance
should come, were to hold the Orange River Bridge (which opened the
way to Kimberley), to cover De Aar Junction, where the stores were, to
protect at all costs the line of railway which led from Cape Town to
Kimberley, and to hold on to as much as possible of those other two
lines of railway which led, the one through Colesberg and the other
through Stormberg, into the Free State. The two bodies of invaders who
entered the colony moved along the line of these two railways, the one
crossing the Orange River at Norval's Pont and the other at Bethulie.
They enlisted many recruits among the Cape Colony Dutch as they
advanced, and the scanty British forces fell back in front of them,
abandoning Colesberg on the one line and Stormberg on the other. We
have, then, to deal with the movements of two British detachments. The
one which operated on the Colesberg line--which was the more vital
of the two, as a rapid advance of the Boers upon that line would have
threatened the precious Cape Town to Kimberley connection--consisted
almost entirely of mounted troops, and was under the command of the
same General French who had won the battle of Elandslaagte. By an act of
foresight which was only too rare upon the British side in the earlier
stages of this war, French, who had in the recent large manoeuvres on
Salisbury Plain shown great ability as a cavalry leader, was sen