pitous spurs of the border
mountains, close to which the railroad passes.

This district may be called the valley of the Tugela; for all the
streams tend to the latter, which finds its own bed in a broad belt of
ground, trending to the eastward, where the surface sinks to less than
3,000 feet. Ladysmith itself, important not only as a railroad
crossing and military depot, but now also historically, on account of
the operations centring around it, is at a height of 3,300. Beyond it
the country, though often rough in detail, is gently rolling in
general contour till near Glencoe, where the road climbs eight hundred
feet in ten miles. From Glencoe a branch runs five miles east to
Dundee, the site of extensive collieries, upon which Natal largely
depends for fuel.

The railroad from Ladysmith to Glencoe passes therefore through a
district the nature of which is favourable to rapid advance or retreat
of mounted men, as the Boer forces chiefly are, and which at the same
time is marked {p.024} by frequent and steep detached elevations,
adapted for defensive positions hastily assumed. These conditions,
with the nearness of the declivities of the western mountains, and the
proximity of the enemy's frontier, behind which movements of troops
would be "curtained"--to use a graphic military metaphor--gave the
Boers particular facilities for striking unexpectedly the railroad
between Ladysmith and Glencoe, upon which, in defect of other
transportation, the two British posts must depend for communication
between themselves, and with their base on the sea.

Further to the south, movements of the same kind would be decisively
more difficult. Not only would the Boers there be further from their
base, and the British nearer theirs, but the country is less
favourable to rapid horse movements, the line of the rail is
contracted by lofty and continuous ranges of hills, the space between
which gives but a narrow front to be covered by a defence, and the
river beds, as already said, are broader and deeper; notably, of
course, the Tugela. Moreover, not only are the mountains on the
western frontier higher and more difficult as one {p.025} goes south,
they are also more remote; and, south of Colenso, form the boundary of
Basutoland, upon which the Boers could not intrude without arousing
armed resistance by the blacks. All these conditions are more
favourable to a pure defensive attitude, which was that imposed at the
outset upon the British