he one sealed
pattern of nature's architecture of the veldt. To the nomadic
traveller and man of peace, landmarks as barren and bare as the great
ironstone belts of Northern Africa, which constrain the power of the
unwilling Nile until she surges in angry cataract through such niggard
opening as they will allow her. To the man of war, a veritable
Gibraltar; a maze of possibilities in defence; a stupendous
undertaking in attack, an undertaking which will brook neither error
nor miscalculation, and from which nature has eliminated much of the
element of chance on the one side to place it to the credit of the
other. Of such a kind were our Colenso, Magersfontein, Stormberg, and
Spion Kop heights. You at home at your ease, taking in from the map in
a second a perfunctory impression of the topography, which it would
take a cavalry brigade half a day to verify, talk glibly of turning
this position and out-flanking that. Know ye that the lateral problem,
which in the pink and green of the atlas would appear so simple, may
be for miles a gridiron of parallel and supporting positions. That the
well-considered turning movement put in motion at the first streak of
dawn may be, and probably will have become, a plain and simple
frontal attack by sunrise, through circumstances that no man, not even
Napoleon himself, could foresee or control. Then this being given, why
not deal leniently with such men as have served you well, and who may
be trusted to profit by experience dearly purchased? but the other
class, the man who has prostituted the fighting excellence of the
British soldier in the shock of war by appealing to the chances of
war, without due care and forethought--why, it is your duty to destroy
him: your bitterest strictures even will not meet the punishment such
a one deserves.

"If a life insurance agent were to turn up now, I should take him on!"
And the brigadier had every cause for anxiety, for the under-features
of Minie Kloof could swallow a thousand men, and still leave a mocking
enemy in possession of the salients. Troop after troop of Dragoons
broke into extended order, and spread away to either flank. The front
became wider and wider, and yet no rifle-shot. The main body and the
guns halted and waited, momentarily expecting to hear that intonation
of the double echo, which in a second would change the whole history
of the day. But it never came. The little brown specks, which had
vanished into the shadow of the mo