y armed bodies of the
enemy or of rebels.

[Footnote 60: The corps mobilised were Prince Alfred's Own
Cape Field artillery, the Cape Garrison Artillery, the
Kaffrarian Mounted Rifles, Prince Alfred's Volunteer Guard,
the Duke of Edinburgh's Volunteer Rifles, and the Cape Town
Highlanders. The Kimberley and Mafeking corps had been called
out before the commencement of the war. Subsequently the
Uitenhage Rifles and the Komgha Mounted Rifles were called
out on the 10th of November, the Cape Medical Staff Corps was
mobilised on the 16th of November, and the Frontier Mounted
Rifles on the 24th of November, 1899.]

[Sidenote: General success of policy of bluff.]

Thus, in the western theatre of war, although the investment of
Kimberley, and, in a lesser degree, the attack on Mafeking, were
causes of grave alarm to the loyalists of Cape Colony, yet, from a
larger point of view, the forward policy of frontier defence
successfully tided over the dangerous weeks previous to the arrival of
the first units of the army corps from home.

CHAPTER III.

THE THEATRE OF WAR.[61]

[Footnote 61: See general map of South Africa, Relief map,
No. 2, and map, No. 3.]

[Sidenote: Three chapters dealing with the ground and the two armies
engaged.]

When the challenge to war, recorded in the first chapter, startled the
British people, it met with an immediate response alike in the home
islands, and in the Colonies, in India, or elsewhere, wherever they
happened to be. In order to understand the problems of no small
complexity confronting the statesmen at home and the generals who in
the field had to carry out the will of the nation by taking up the
gauntlet so thrown down, it is necessary, first, that the
characteristics of the vast area which was about to become the scene
of operations should be realised; secondly, that the strength of the
forces on which the challenger relied for making good his words should
be estimated; and, thirdly, that certain peculiarities in the
constitution of our own army, which materially affected the nature of
the task which lay before both Ministers and soldiers, whether in
London or in South Africa, should be recognised. The next three
chapters will deal in succession with each of these subjects. The
attempt which is here made to portray in a few pages the mountains,
the rolling prairies,