importance to this attack on Ladysmith, because he had
written a letter ordering De Villiers to capture Bester's Ridge, at all
costs, with his commando of Free State Boers, and promising that those
who succeeded in winning that position should be released from further
service. This anxiety to get hold of a range which includes Caesar's Camp
and Waggon Hill, and commands Ladysmith at a range of 5000 yards, can be
easily understood, but the urgency demanding any sacrifice of life,
provided that end were attained, suggests many possibilities, and gives
to Saturday's fight exceptional significance as a probable turning-point
in the Natal Campaign, which has hitherto gone in favour of our foes,
notwithstanding the victories we have gained over them in isolated
actions. Dundee and Elandslaagte, like Lord Methuen's fights on the
Modder River, added lustre to our army, by showing what British soldiers
can do in assaulting positions against the terrific fire from modern
magazine rifles, but it cannot be said that we have profited by them
while our enemies are able to keep us here cut off from all
communications except by heliograph or search-light signals, and have
yet force enough to interpose a formidable line of resistance between
Ladysmith and Sir Redvers Buller's column.

There cannot be many Boers in any position surrounding this place, but
their mobility gives them the power of concentrating quickly at any
point that might be threatened, and this for all practical purposes
increases their numbers threefold. As Colonel F. Rhodes put it in one of
his quaintly appropriate phrases, "We are a victorious army besieged by
an inferior enemy." But there are Boers in twice our own strength near
at hand, if, not actually all in the investing lines. The Tugela Heights
are scarcely twelve miles off as the crow flies, and this distance might
be covered by a Boer commando in less than two hours, so that a thousand
men or more moving from one of our enemy's columns to another, could be
brought into a fight in time to turn the tide against either Ladysmith
or its relieving force as occasion might prompt. For attacking a
particular point this mobility would give enormous advantages if the
Boers only knew how to make full use of them, and carried arms on which
they could rely for hand-to-hand fighting, in the critical moment of
pushing an attack home.

As it is they trust to tactics that have stood them well in previous
campaigns against