e dries to the roots.

From these conditions it results that not only is agriculture
generally impracticable, economically, but {p.008} that cattle and
sheep, the chief wealth of the Boer farmers, require an unusual
proportion of ground per head for pasture; and the mobility of bodies
of horsemen, expecting to subsist their beasts upon local pasturage,
is greatly affected by the seasons--an important military
consideration. The large holdings introduce large spaces between the
holders, who dwell therefore alone, each man with his family. So it
has come to pass that the descendants of one of the most mercantile
and gregarious of races, whose artists have won some of their chiefest
triumphs in depicting the joyous episodes of crowded social life,
have, through calling and environment, become lovers of solitude,
austere, self-dependent, disposed rather to repel than to seek their
kind.

The same conditions, unfavourable to the aggregation of people into
towns or villages, have interfered with the development of lines of
travel, roads and cross-roads, which not only facilitate but define
movement; and as the face of the country, readily traversable in all
directions, does not compel roads to take a particular direction to
avoid obstacles, it has come {p.009} to pass that the seat of war
within the territory of the two Boer states has, like the ocean, and
for the same reasons, few strategic points either natural or
artificial.

The determining natural military features in South Africa are the
seaports, upon possession of which depends Great Britain's landing her
forces, and the mountain ranges, the passes of which, as in all such
regions, are of the utmost strategic value. It has been said that the
Boers' original plan of campaign was to force the British out of
Natal, thus closing access by Durban from the sea, and at the same
time to seize the pass back of Cape Town known as Hex River. If
successful, the eastern flank of the Boer frontier would have been
secured against British landing by the occupation of Durban, while
advance from Cape Town, against the other extremity, would have
involved a front attack upon a strong position in a difficult mountain
defile.

These movements, accurate in conception, were probably in any case too
developed for the Boer numbers, and were definitively foiled by the
British grip upon Ladysmith and Kimberley. Advance was too hazardous,
leaving in {p.010} the rear such forces, unchecked,