most too clear to be credible to us, and one cannot but regret
the omission of the English force to hold the spurs of the mountain
when occupying the top, seeing that any attacking party, safe from
fire from the top of the hill on account of the projecting spurs,
could get up untouched to within a few feet of the top of this
northern face; this is what the Boers did while holding poor Sir
George Colley's attention by long-range fire from the valley below. We
saw what must have been the very paths up which the Boers crept, and
when it came to the point where they had to emerge the slope was
precipitous but short; here, so records tell us, by a heavy rifle-fire
while lying flat on their stomachs, they drove our men off the
sky-line, and once at the top the whole affair became a slaughter.
Climbing this last steep bit as best we could, we reached the flat top
quite blown and found it about 300 yards wide with the well-known,
cup-shaped hollow, in the centre of which lie our poor fellows buried
in a wire enclosure--sad to say twenty-two bluejackets among them,
beside Gordons, King's Royal Rifles, and others. An insignificant
stone heap marks the place where poor Colley was shot, and on one
stone is put in black-lead "Here Colley fell." The sky-line which our
men held had only a few small rocks behind which they tried to shelter
themselves but no other defence at all in the shape of a wall or
trench. All the east and south faces overlooking the nek have now
(nineteen years later) been very heavily trenched by the Boers at
great expense of labour; they were evidently expecting we should
attack and perhaps turn them out of Majuba, although the slope of the
hill on the south side is quite too precipitous for such an operation.
I picked up some fern and plants near where Colley fell, as a memento.
We took an hour and a half to get down again, meeting General Buller
and his Staff walking up to inspect the hill, and I rode back ten
miles to Volksrust blessed with a headache from the steep climb and
strong air. The view from the top of Majuba, showing the Boer trenches
on Laing's Nek, was wonderful; well might they think their position
impregnable and well might we be satisfied to have marched through
Botha's Pass and forced the enemy to evacuate such an impregnable
place with so little loss to ourselves.

_Sunday, 17th June._--Left Volksrust early to march on Wakkerstroom,
news having come in that General Lyttelton was somewhat pr