thereupon
stated to Colonel Durnford the orders that he had received, to 'defend
the camp,' and it would appear that either then or subsequently some
altercation took place between these two officers. In the issue,
however, Colonel Durnford advanced his mounted force to ascertain the
enemy's movements, and directed a company of the 1st battalion 24th
regiment to occupy a hill about 1,200 yards to the north of the camp.

Other companies of the 24th were stationed at various points at a
distance from the camp. It may be well to explain here, that to these
movements of troops, which, so far as can be ascertained, were made by
the direct orders of Colonel Durnford, must be attributed the terrible
disaster that followed. There are two ways of fighting a savage or
undisciplined enemy; the scientific way, such as is taught in staff
colleges, and the unscientific way that is to be learned in the sterner
school of experience. We English were not the first white men who had to
deal with the rush of the Zulu impis. The Boers had encountered them
before, at the battle of the Blood River, and armed only with
muzzle-loading 'roers,' or elephant guns, despite their desperate
valour, had worsted them, with fearful slaughter. But they did not
advance bodies of men to this point or to that, according to the
scientific method; they drew their ox waggons into a square, lashing
them together with 'reims' or hide-ropes, and from behind this rough
defence, with but trifling loss to themselves, rolled back charge after
charge of the warriors of Dingaan.

Had this method been followed by our troops at the battle of
Isandhlwana, who had ample waggons at hand to enable them to execute the
manoeuvre, had the soldiers even been collected in a square beneath
the cliff of the mountain, it cannot be doubted but that, armed as they
were with breech-loaders, they would have been able to drive back not
only the impi sent against them, but, if necessary, the entire Zulu
army. Indeed, that this would have been so is demonstrated by what
happened on the same day at Rorke's Drift, where a hundred and thirty
men repelled the desperate assaults of three or four thousand. Why,
then, it may be asked, did Colonel Durnford, a man of considerable
colonial experience, adopt the more risky, if the more scientific, mode
of dealing with the present danger, and this in spite of Colonel
Pulleine's direct intimation to him that his orders were 'to defend the
camp'? As i