ut any settled scheme, and, owing to the straggling
and indiscipline of his burghers, the march was rapidly becoming
unmanageable. The commander, whose plans and army require
consolidation after but four days, may well look with foreboding upon
the campaign he has taken in hand, and Joubert was as little hopeful
as any invader in history. Nevertheless, at Newcastle he devised a net
which, had it been cast as he designed, might by entangling one
British force beyond salvation, have weakened another beyond repair
and perhaps have laid Natal at his feet. Whilst Erasmus with his 5,000
men moved straight down upon Dundee, Kock with 800 riflemen, composed
of Schiel's Germans, Lombard's Hollanders, and 200 men of Johannesburg
under Viljoen, with two guns, was to reconnoitre towards Ladysmith,
gaining touch with the Free Staters at Van Reenen's and the other
passes of the Drakensberg. He was then to take up a position in the
Biggarsberg range, cutting the railway between Dundee and Ladysmith.
Thus isolated, the garrison of Dundee appeared to be at the mercy of
a combined attack by Erasmus from the north, and Lukas Meyer from the
east.

[Sidenote: Slow movement of Boers.]

Kock and Erasmus had left the neighbourhood of Newcastle on the 17th,
and on the afternoon of the 18th the latter's advance guard came into
collision with a squadron of the 18th Hussars, from Dundee, north of
Hatting Spruit. Meanwhile Meyer, who was much behindhand with his
concentration, lay so close in his camp at the Doornberg, that the
British patrols scouted up to De Jager's Drift again without
opposition. Meyer still lacked two commandos (Krugersdorp and Bethel)
and four guns, and as his transport animals were in a deplorable
condition, it was with relief rather than with impatience that he
watched the tardiness of his coadjutors. His missing units arrived in
the evening, however; Erasmus' advanced guard was close behind Impati
on the morning of the 19th, and Meyer then issued orders for a march.

[Sidenote: Sir George White recalls Dundee detachment.]

Meanwhile, on the 15th October, an officer of the Headquarter staff
visited Dundee, and on his return to Ladysmith was questioned by Sir
G. White as to the state of the defences existing at the post. To his
surprise he learnt that, properly speaking, no defences existed at
all--no position, no entrenchments, and, most important of all, no
assured and defended supply of water. His instructions, in shor