nce, but for strategic purposes it is absolutely worthless. It is
worse. It is a regular trap. The town and cantonment stand in a huge
circle of hills which enclasp it on all sides like the arms of a giant,
and though so great is the circle that only guns of the heavier class
can reach the town from the heights, once an enemy has established
himself on these heights it is beyond the power of the garrison to
dislodge him, or perhaps even to break out. Not only do the surrounding
hills keep the garrison in, but they also form a formidable barrier to
the advance of a relieving force. Thus it is that the ten thousand
troops in Ladysmith are at this moment actually an encumbrance. To
extricate them--I write advisedly, to endeavour to extricate
them--brigades and divisions must be diverted from all the other easy
lines of advance, and Sir Redvers Buller, who had always deprecated any
attempt to hold Natal north of the Tugela, is compelled to attack the
enemy on their own terms and their own ground.

What are those terms? The northern side of the Tugela River at nearly
every point commands the southern bank. Ranges of high hills strewn with
boulders and dotted with trees rise abruptly from the water, forming a
mighty rampart for the enemy. Before this the river, a broad torrent
with few and narrow fords and often precipitous banks, flows rapidly--a
great moat. And before the river again, on our side stretches a smooth,
undulating, grassy country--a regular glacis. To defend the rampart and
sweep the glacis are gathered, according to my information derived in
Pretoria, twelve thousand, according to the Intelligence Branch fifteen
thousand, of the best riflemen in the world armed with beautiful
magazine rifles, supplied with an inexhaustible store of ammunition, and
supported by fifteen or twenty excellent quick-firing guns, all
artfully entrenched and concealed. The drifts of the river across which
our columns must force their way are all surrounded with trenches and
rifle pits, from which a converging fire may be directed, and the actual
bottom of the river is doubtless obstructed by entanglements of barbed
wire and other devices. But when all these difficulties have been
overcome the task is by no means finished. Nearly twenty miles of broken
country, ridge rising beyond ridge, kopje above kopje, all probably
already prepared for defence, intervene between the relieving army and
the besieged garrison.

Such is the situation,