ievously cramped by the constant necessity for caution,
and still more by the tedious movements of the mass of transport,
without which no army can continue to operate in a country sparsely
inhabited, and as sparsely cultivated.

[Sidenote: Variety of rainfall.]

In South Africa even the rainfall militates against concurrent
operations on a wide scale, for, at the same season of the year, the
conditions prevalent upon one side of the sub-continent are exactly
the opposite to those obtaining on the other. In the western
provinces, the rainy season occurs in the winter months
(May--October), in the eastern, including the Boer States, the rain
falls chiefly in the summer (October--March). Yet so capricious are
these phenomena that a commander, who counted absolutely upon them for
his schemes, might easily find them in abeyance, or even for a period
reversed.

[Sidenote: Variety of S.A. climate.]

Beyond the broad facts stated above, the extent of South Africa
renders it as impossible to specify any typical climatic or scenic
peculiarities common to the whole of it, as to fix upon any
strategical or tactical character that is universal. Cape Colony alone
exhibits such antitheses of landscape as the moist verdure of the
Stormberg and the parched dreariness of Bushman and Little Namaqua
Lands, and a rainfall ranging from two to seventy-two inches per
annum. The variations in other parts are little less striking. The
temperature of the High Veld, for instance, is wont to rise or fall no
less than sixty degrees in twelve hours, or less. Thus, whilst one
portion of an army on a wide front might be operating in the tropics,
another might be in the snows, whilst a third was sheltering from the
sun by day, from the frost by night, conditions which actually
obtained during the contest about to be described. What effect such
divergencies must exercise on plans of campaign, on supplies of
clothing, shelter, food, forage, and on military animals themselves,
may be readily imagined.

CHAPTER IV.

THE BOER ARMY.

[Sidenote: Many previous cases compare with Boer resistance.]

[Sidenote: Inherited faculties.]

Any force of irregulars which offers a prolonged resistance, not
unmarked by tactical successes, to a regular army of superior strength
is apt to be regarded as a phenomenon. Yet, from the earliest times,
history has shown how seasoned troops may be checked by an enemy who
is inferior in numbers, discipline and a