subjects affecting the whole
course of the war, the theatre of operations, the two opposed armies,
and the British navy. The present one, which describes the first
action in the campaign, connects immediately with the second, that on
the outbreak of the war, taking up the narrative from the time when,
as a consequence of the conference at Maritzburg between the Governor
(Sir W. Hely-Hutchinson), Sir George White, Sir A. Hunter and
Maj.-Genl. Sir W. Penn Symons, the latter officer had been despatched
to take over the command at Dundee while Sir George White had gone to
Ladysmith.

[Sidenote: Arrival, Oct. 12th/99 of Symons at Dundee.]

On October 12th, the day when the British agent quitted Pretoria,
Major-General Sir W. Penn Symons arrived at Dundee, and took over
command of 3,280 infantry, 497 cavalry and eighteen guns from
Brigadier-General J. H. Yule.[87] He had gained his point. Dundee was
to be held, and held by him. As early as the 13th news came that a
strong commando was concentrating at the Doornberg east of De Jager's
Drift, and that small parties of the enemy had been sighted four miles
north of Newcastle, whilst to his left rear the Free Staters were
reported so close to Ladysmith, and in such strength, as to cause Sir
George White to recall one of Symons' own battalions, the 2nd Royal
Dublin Fusiliers, to strengthen a column which was pushed out on
October 13th towards Tintwa Pass to get touch with the enemy. This
column[88] failed, however, to observe even patrols of the enemy, and
the Dublin Fusiliers returned to Dundee by train the same night. On
this day the enemy fell upon a piquet of Natal Policemen posted at De
Jager's Drift, and made them prisoners. A patrol of the 18th Hussars
proceeding to reconnoitre the spot next day, the 14th, came upon a
scouting party of forty of the enemy a mile on the British side of the
Buffalo. On the 16th a fugitive from Newcastle announced the arrival
of a commando, 3,000 strong, before Newcastle, another in Botha's
Pass, whilst across Wools Drift, on the Buffalo, six miles of wagons
had been seen trekking slowly southwards. If the left, then, was for
the moment clear, it was plain that strong bodies were coming down on
Symons' front and right, a front whose key was Impati, a right whose
only bulwark was the hill of Talana.

[Footnote 87: For composition of this force see Appendix 3.]

[Footnote 88: Composition: 5th Lancers, detachment of 19th