many native broils and in the British campaign
of 1881 he had shown himself a capable leader. His record in standing
out for the independence of the Transvaal was a very consistent one, for
he had not accepted office under the British, as Kruger had done, but
had remained always an irreconcilable. Tall and burly, with hard grey
eyes and a grim mouth half hidden by his bushy beard, he was a fine type
of the men whom he led. He was now in his sixty-fifth year, and the fire
of his youth had, as some of the burghers urged, died down within him;
but he was experienced, crafty, and warwise, never dashing and never
brilliant, but slow, steady, solid, and inexorable.

Besides this northern army there were two other bodies of burghers
converging upon Natal. One, consisting of the commandoes from Utrecht
and the Swaziland districts, had gathered at Vryheid on the flank of the
British position at Dundee. The other, much larger, not less probably
than six or seven thousand men, were the contingent from the Free State
and a Transvaal corps, together with Schiel's Germans, who were making
their way through the various passes, the Tintwa Pass, and Van Reenen's
Pass, which lead through the grim range of the Drakensberg and open out
upon the more fertile plains of Western Natal. The total force may have
been something between twenty and thirty thousand men. By all accounts
they were of an astonishingly high heart, convinced that a path of easy
victory lay before them, and that nothing could bar their way to the
sea. If the British commanders underrated their opponents, there is
ample evidence that the mistake was reciprocal.

A few words now as to the disposition of the British forces, concerning
which it must be borne in mind that Sir George White, though in
actual command, had only been a few days in the country before war was
declared, so that the arrangements fell to General Penn Symons, aided
or hampered by the advice of the local political authorities. The main
position was at Ladysmith, but an advance post was strongly held at
Glencoe, which is five miles from the station of Dundee and forty from
Ladysmith. The reason for this dangerous division of force was to secure
each end of the Biggarsberg section of the railway, and also to cover
the important collieries of that district. The positions chosen seem in
each case to show that the British commander was not aware of the number
and power of the Boer guns, for each was equally d