ould be on the rear of the army, flanking the communications. To
secure these it would be necessary, before forward movement, either to
carry the place by assault, suitably prepared and executed, thus
sweeping it out of the way for good, or else to keep before it a
detachment of sufficient strength to check any effort seriously to
interrupt the communications. But this would be to divide the Boer
forces, to which doubtless Joubert did not feel his numbers adequate.
This was the important--the decisive--part played by Ladysmith in the
campaign.

Had the Boers' "exclusiveness of purpose"--to use Napoleon's happy
phrase--answered to the demands of their military situation, they
would have done for military reasons what their opponents were
compelled to do through {p.112} unpreparedness and considerations of
civil policy. They would have neglected the frontiers of Cape Colony,
and concentrated their effort against the organised force which
exceptionally favourable circumstances, that could not be expected
either to continue or to recur, had enabled them to isolate in Natal.

What effect the failure to do this produced in the latter colony will
be examined later. We have now to consider how the Boers, having
decided to follow two widely divergent plans of operations, utilised
the opportunity afforded them by the long period of weakness undergone
by their antagonists in the debatable ground, where the frontiers of
Cape Colony and the Orange Free State adjoin, along the banks of the
Orange River from Basutoland to Kimberley. Remote and detached
Mafeking, the news of whose deliverance comes as these lines are
writing, remains a romantic episode, a dramatic centre of interest,
from the heroic endurance and brilliant gallantry displayed by its
garrison; but, from the practical side, the action of friend and foe,
the fact of occupation and the conduct of {p.113} the siege, present
a military riddle not readily solved.

Noting the natural military line of the Orange River, the importance
of which in more military countries would be emphasized by
corresponding works of precaution, for defence and for movement, in
its vicinity, it will be observed that parallel to it, at a distance
of about fifty miles, within the borders of the colony, there is the
stretch of railway from Stormberg, _via_ Rosmead Junction and
Naauwport, to De Aar. Beyond the last-named point the line, now become
the main road, converges steadily and rapidly upon