ning the Transvaal General sent an urgent despatch to his
Free State colleague, imploring him to return to the railway line, and
in compliance with this request Prinsloo on the following day left
Commandant T. van der Merwe with 800 men at Ramdam, and moved to
Graspan with the rest of his men. On the arrival of the Free State
commandos at Graspan, a Krijgsraad assembled, and decided to remain on
the defensive for the next twenty-four hours, after which period, if
no forward move were made by the British troops, the two republican
leaders would themselves assume the offensive.

[Sidenote: Character of position.]

The natural redoubt, which the Boer leaders had thus determined to
hold, rises abruptly from the level, and commands the approaches
across the veld on the south, east and west; the even surface of the
plain, the sandy soil of which was barely concealed by dry tufts of
coarse grass, presented not an inch of cover, save for a few
ant-mounds dotted about here and there: their hard sun-baked walls
afford good protection from bullets for a skirmisher lying close
behind them. The kopjes are so grouped as to facilitate the
reinforcement of either the front face or the flanks from a centrally
placed body. They overlook, moreover, the only water available in the
vicinity, a few muddy pans and wells within the hills to the rear. The
southern face of the stronghold, tracing it from west to east, has a
length of about a mile. The flanks of this face are very definitely
marked by two razor-backed kopjes, the one on the east and the other
on the west, rising some 150 feet above the surrounding ground; both
these kopjes run approximately from the south to the north. In the
centre of the southern face lies a third kopje, oval in shape, 200
yards in length and 30 feet higher than the flank hillocks with which
it is connected by re-entrant ridges.

[Sidenote: Its one weakness.]

The left flank mentioned above consists mainly of that eastern
razor-backed kopje already referred to, which runs northward for a
distance of some 1,200 yards, its crest line broken by a series of
small knolls. Further north on this flank are one or two smaller
kopjes, then a mile of valley, on the far side of which, nestling
under another cluster of hills, lie the Rooilaagte homestead and a
Kaffir kraal. On the right flank in like manner the western razor-back
is similarly continued in a northerly direction by two other small
kopjes, the more northe