f
them retired slowly down the slope. But for many, that gallant charge
was their last earthly action. As they charged they fell, and where they
fell they were afterwards buried. The casualties, killed and wounded,
amounted to 195, which, considering the small number of troops engaged
in the actual attack, is enormously heavy, and shows more plainly than
words can tell, the desperate nature of the undertaking. Amongst the
killed were Colonel Deane, Major Poole, Major Hingeston, and Lieutenant
Elwes. Major Essex was the only staff officer engaged who escaped,
the same officer who was one of the fortunate four who lived through
Isandhlwana. On this occasion his usual good fortune attended him,
for though his horse was killed and his helmet knocked off, he was not
touched. The Boer loss was very trivial.

Sir George Colley, in his admirably lucid despatch about this occurrence
addressed to the Secretary of State for War, does not enter much into
the question as to the motives that prompted him to attack, simply
stating that his object was to relieve the besieged towns. He does not
appear to have taken into consideration, what was obvious to anybody who
knew the country and the Boers, that even if he had succeeded in forcing
the Nek, in itself almost an impossibility, he could never have operated
with any success in the Transvaal with so small a column, without
cavalry, and with an enormous train of waggons. He would have been
harassed day and night by the Boer skirmishers, his supplies cut off,
and his advance made practically impossible. Also the Nek would have
been re-occupied behind him, since he could not have detached sufficient
men to hold it, and in all probability Newcastle, his base of supplies,
would have fallen into the hands of the enemy.

The moral effect of our defeat on the Boers was very great. Up to this
time there had been many secret doubts amongst a large section of them
as to what the upshot of an encounter with the troops might be; and with
this party, in the same way that defeat, or even the anxiety of waiting
to be attacked, would have turned the scale one way, victory turned it
the other. It gave them unbounded confidence in their own superiority,
and infused a spirit of cohesion and mutual reliance into their ranks
which had before been wanting. Waverers wavered no longer, but gave a
loyal adherence to the good cause, and, what was still more acceptable,
large numbers of volunteers,--whatever Pre