s, yet that
was the case with the Boers at Spion Kop. There were but few battles in
the entire campaign that the Boer forces were not vastly outnumbered by
the enemy, who usually had from twice to twenty times their number of
cannon, yet the burghers were well aware of the fact and did not allow it
to interfere with their plans nor did they display great temerity in
battling with such a foe. When Lord Roberts and his three thousand cavalry
entered Jacobsdal there were less than one hundred armed Boers in the
town, but they made a determined stand against the enemy, and in a
street-fight a large percentage of the burghers fell, and their blood
mingled with that of those they had slain. Large bodies of Boers rarely
attacked, and never resisted the enemy on level stretches of veld, not
because they lacked courage to do so, but because they saw the futility of
such action. After the British drove the Boers out of the kopjes east and
north-east of Bloemfontein the burghers had no broken country suited to
their particular style of warfare, and they retreated to the Vaal without
much effort to stop the advance of the enemy. The Boer generals knew that
the British were equipped with innumerable cannon, which could sweep the
level veld for several miles before them and make the ground untenable for
the riflemen--the mainstay of the Boer army.

[Illustration: SPION KOP, WHERE BOERS CHARGED UP THE HILLSIDE]

When they were on hills the Boers were able to entrench themselves so
thoroughly that the fire of several hundred heavy guns made hardly any
impression on them, but as soon as they attempted to apply those tactics
on level ground the results were most disastrous. At Colenso and
Magersfontein the burghers remained in their trenches on the hills while
thousands of shrapnel and other shells exploded above and around them, but
very few men were injured, and when the British infantry advanced under
cover of the shell fire the Boers merely remained in the trenches until
the enemy had approached to within several hundred yards and then assailed
them with rifle fire. Trenches always afforded perfect safety from shell
fire, and on that account the Boers were able to cope so long and well
with the British in the fighting along the Tugela and around Kimberley.
The Boers generally remained quietly in their trenches and made no reply
to the British cannon fire, however hot it was. The British generals
several times mistook this silence as