though it seemed to mere spectators that a
chance was thus being given for the enemy to mount batteries on heights
that commanded nearly every part of our camp.

To make this perfectly clear without the aid of a map showing contours
of all ridges and hollows is very difficult, and one can only attempt to
give in words a rough idea of the general position. If the reader will
bear in mind what a horse's hoof inverted looks like, he may get a
mental picture of Ladysmith and its surroundings--the heels of the
horse-shoe pointing eastward, where, five miles off, is the long, flat
top of steep Bulwaan, like the huge bar of a gigantic horse-shoe magnet.
The horse's frog approximately represents a ridge behind which, and
facing Bulwaan, but separated from it by broad stretches of meadow, with
the Klip River winding a serpentine course through them, between high
banks, is Ladysmith town. Between the frog and the horse-shoe lie our
various camps, mostly in radiating hollows, open either to the east or
west, but sheltered from cross fires by rough kopjes of porphyritic
boulders that have turned brown on the surface by exposure to sunshine.
Bushy tangles of wild, white jasmine spring from among these boulders
with denser growth of thriving shrubs bearing waxen flowers that blaze
in brilliant scarlet and orange, and the coarse grass that begins to
show on every patch of earth between the rocks is dotted with clusters
like dwarf petunias, or purple bells of trailing convolvulus. A rich
storehouse this for the botanist, whose contemplative studies, however,
might be rudely disturbed by the shriek and boom of shells bursting
about him, for, as I have said, the enemy's guns command most of these
ridges, though they cannot always search the hollows in which our camps
are as much as possible hidden.

The horse-shoe, in its irregular curve, is dotted here and there with
outposts, whose duty it is to keep the enemy's sharpshooters from
getting within rifle range of our artillery positions encrusting the
ridges at several points like nails of the horse-shoe. Without locating
them exactly, one may say that the Naval batteries are on rough
eminences of the northern heel, facing Rietfontein Hill, where the
Creusot gun, known as "Long Tom," is mounted behind earthworks at a
range of 6800 yards, which is well within compass of the _Powerful's_
12-pounders and at least 3000 yards less than the extreme distance at
which shells from her 4.7-inch q