h, finding that I
could make a practicable approach, I crossed the guns and baggage back
to the south side of the Tugela, took up the pontoon bridge on the
night of the 26th, and relaid it at the new site.... On the 27th
General Barton, with two battalions 6th Brigade and the Royal Dublin
Fusiliers, crept about one and a half miles down the banks of the
river, and, ascending an almost precipitous cliff of about 500 feet,
assaulted and carried the top of Pieter's Hill. This hill to a certain
extent turned the enemy's left, and the 4th Brigade, under Colonel
Norcott, and the 11th Brigade, under Colonel Kitchener, the whole
under General Warren, assailed the enemy's main position, which was
magnificently {p.301} carried by the South Lancashire Regiment about
sunset."

This handsome operation, which finally loosed the bonds in which
Ladysmith was held, should perhaps be described in more detail than a
telegram commonly admits. At the lower end of the northerly stretch of
the Tugela, below Colenso, where the river again turns east, the
railroad, which has kept close to the west bank, also inclines east
for a mile and a half, constrained still to cling to the stream by
hills to the northward. The more conspicuous of these had been named
Terrace Hill and Railway Hill, and there it was that the British
attacks of the 24th had been baffled. After passing them the road
leaves the river, runs north, and in another mile reaches Pieter's
Station. A mile to the eastward of this is Pieter's Hill, which the
river nears by a northerly bend in its course. The Boer position north
of this section of the river stretched from Railway Hill,
three-quarters of a mile west of the road, to Pieter's Hill. The
British occupied the heights on the opposite side, between one and two
miles distant, and 200 feet above the {p.302} bed of the Tugela.
Along these crests they mounted heavy guns, a sustained fire from
which, as is usual, preceded the attack.

On February 27--Majuba Day--as the troops detailed for the assault
were about to step on to the bridge, there was communicated to them
the news of Cronje's surrender at an earlier hour of the same day,
flashed by the wires around from the Modder by way of the sea. Under
this inspiring intelligence they went into action. The crossing was
made near the angle of the river, where it turns the second time and
resumes its easterly direction. Barton's brigade, which was to carry
Pieter's Hill--the enemy's l