and
that night (February 15th) the relieving column camped on the plain two
miles away, while French and his staff rode in to the rescued city.

The war was a cruel one for the cavalry, who were handicapped throughout
by the nature of the country and by the tactics of the enemy. They are
certainly the branch of the service which had least opportunity for
distinction. The work of scouting and patrolling is the most dangerous
which a soldier can undertake, and yet from its very nature it can find
no chronicler. The war correspondent, like Providence, is always with
the big battalions, and there never was a campaign in which there was
more unrecorded heroism, the heroism of the picket and of the vedette
which finds its way into no newspaper paragraph. But in the larger
operations of the war it is difficult to say that cavalry, as cavalry,
have justified their existence. In the opinion of many the tendency of
the future will be to convert the whole force into mounted infantry. How
little is required to turn our troopers into excellent foot soldiers
was shown at Magersfontein, where the 12th Lancers, dismounted by the
command of their colonel, Lord Airlie, held back the threatened flank
attack all the morning. A little training in taking cover, leggings
instead of boots, and a rifle instead of a carbine would give us a
formidable force of twenty thousand men who could do all that our
cavalry does, and a great deal more besides. It is undoubtedly possible
on many occasions in this war, at Colesberg, at Diamond Hill, to say
'Here our cavalry did well.' They are brave men on good horses, and they
may be expected to do well. But the champion of the cavalry cause must
point out the occasions where the cavalry did something which could
not have been done by the same number of equally brave and equally
well-mounted infantry. Only then will the existence of the cavalry be
justified. The lesson both of the South African and of the American
civil war is that the light horseman who is trained to fight on foot is
the type of the future.

A few more words as a sequel to this short sketch of the siege and
relief of Kimberley. Considerable surprise has been expressed that the
great gun at Kamfersdam, a piece which must have weighed many tons and
could not have been moved by bullock teams at a rate of more than two
or three miles an hour, should have eluded our cavalry. It is indeed a
surprising circumstance, and yet it was due to no iner