h daylight comes
a little after four, the operations were not commenced before seven.
Lyttelton's Brigade had stormed the hill at two, and nothing more was
done during the long evening, while officers chafed and soldiers swore,
and the busy Boers worked furiously to bring up their guns and to bar
the path which we must take. General Buller remarked a day or two
later that the way was not quite so easy as it had been. One might have
deduced the fact without the aid of a balloon.

The brigade then occupied Vaalkranz and erected sangars and dug
trenches. On the morning of the 6th, the position of the British force
was not dissimilar to that of Spion Kop. Again they had some thousands
of men upon a hill-top, exposed to shell fire from several directions
and without any guns upon the hill to support them. In one or two points
the situation was modified in their favour, and hence their escape from
loss and disaster. A more extended position enabled the infantry to
avoid bunching, but in other respects the situation was parallel to that
in which they had found themselves a fortnight before.

The original plan was that the taking of Vaalkranz should be the first
step towards the outflanking of Brakfontein and the rolling up of the
whole Boer position. But after the first move the British attitude
became one of defence rather than of attack. Whatever the general and
ultimate effect of these operations may have been, it is beyond question
that their contemplation was annoying and bewildering in the extreme to
those who were present. The position on February 6th was this. Over the
river upon the hill was a single British brigade, exposed to the fire
of one enormous gun--a 96-pound Creusot, the longest of all Long
Toms--which was stationed upon Doornkloof, and of several smaller guns
and pom-poms which spat at them from nooks and crevices of the hills.
On our side were seventy-two guns, large and small, all very noisy and
impotent. It is not too much to say, as it appears to me, that the
Boers have in some ways revolutionised our ideas in regard to the use of
artillery, by bringing a fresh and healthy common-sense to bear upon
a subject which had been unduly fettered by pedantic rules. The Boer
system is the single stealthy gun crouching where none can see it. The
British system is the six brave guns coming into action in line of full
interval, and spreading out into accurate dressing visible to all men.
'Always remember,' says on