The summit is 5,500 feet
above the sea, or nearly 2,000 feet above Ladysmith. From the steep
slopes, in places almost as green as the Lowlands or Yorkshire fells, I
looked south-east far over Natal--a parched, brown land like the desert
beyond the Dead Sea, dusty bits of plain broken up by line upon line of
bare red mountain. It seemed a poor country to make a fuss about, yet as
South Africa goes, it is rich and even fertile in its way. Indeed, on
the reddest granite mountain one never fails to find multitudes of
flowering plants and pasturage for thinnish sheep. Across the main
range, Van Reenen's is the largest and best known pass. The old farmer
who gave it the name is living there still and bitterly laments the
chance of war. But there are other passes too, any of which may suddenly
become famous now--Olivier's Hoek, near the gigantic Mont aux Sources,
Bezuidenhaut, Netherby, Tintwa, and (north of Van Reenen's) De Beer's
Pass, Cundycleugh, Muller's, and Botha's, beyond which the range ends
with the frontier at Majuba. Three or four of these passes are crossed
by waggon roads, but Van Reenen's has the only railway. The frontier,
marked by a barbed wire fence across the summit of the pass, must be
nearly forty miles from Ladysmith, but from the cliffs above it, the
little British camp can be seen like a toy through this clear African
air, and Boer sentries watch it all day, ready to signal the least
movement of its troops, betrayed by the dust. Their own main force is
distributed in camps along the hills well beyond the nine-miles' limit
ordained by the Convention. The largest camp is said to be further north
at Nelson's Kop, but all the camps are very well hidden, though in one
place I saw about 500 of the horses trying to graze. The rains are late,
and the grass on the high plateau of the Free State is not so good as
on the Natal slopes of the pass. The Boer commandoes suffer much from
want of it. When all your army consists of mounted infantry, forage
counts next to food.

At present the Van Reenen Railway ends at Harrismith, an arid but
cheerful little town at the foot of the great cliffs of the Plaatburg.
It boasts its racecourse, golf-links, musical society, and some
acquaintance with the German poets. The Scotch made it their own, though
a few Dutch, English, and other foreigners were allowed to remain on
sufferance. Now unhappily the place is almost deserted, and Burns
himself would hardly find a welcome there