elict trucks
left by a train, which, having been fired on at Elandslaagte, had
dropped them for greater speed. Three companies 2nd Royal Dublin
Fusiliers, which had been railed to the Navigation Collieries,
north-east of Hatting Spruit, at 3 a.m., to bring back eight tons of
mealies which the General was unwilling to leave for the enemy, also
returned in safety.

[Sidenote: Meyer Oct. 19th moves forward.]

[Sidenote: Oct. 20th, 2.30 a.m., seizes Talana.]

At sundown on October 19th, Lukas Meyer left his bivouac with about
3,500 men and seven guns. De Jager's Drift was crossed about 9 p.m.;
then, pressing through the Sunday's[90] river south-west of Maybole
farm, Meyer's force emerged on to the bleak expanse of veld stretching
east of Dundee. The Boer scouts, moving parallel to and north of the
Landman's Drift road, drew with great caution towards Talana. At 2.30
a.m. a party of burghers came upon a British piquet of the Dublin
Fusiliers mounted infantry, commanded by Lieut. C. T. W. Grimshaw, at
the junction of the road with the track to Vant's Drift. Shots were
exchanged, the piquet disappeared, and the Boer advance guard was upon
the flat summit of Talana an hour before dawn, with Dundee sleeping
five hundred feet below. Close on the heels of the scouts pressed the
Utrecht and Wakkerstroom commandos, under Commandants Hatting and
Joshua Joubert, of about 900 and 600 men respectively, with some 300
Krugersdorpers under Potgieter in addition, and a few men of the
Ermelo commando. The rest of the main body, consisting of the Vryheid
commando (600 men, under Van Staaden), the Middelburg commando (some
900 men, under Trichardt), portion of the Swazi Police, portion of the
Piet Retief commando (170 men, under Englebrecht), and odd men of the
Bethel and other absent commandos, made their way rapidly across the
Dundee road, and took up position on the heights south of it. Of the
artillery, two field-pieces (Creusot 75 m/m) were hauled into a
depression nearly at the rear edge of the top of Talana, a "pom-pom"
(37.5 m/m Vickers-Maxim) pushed forward to the advanced crest of the
same eminence, and the remainder, consisting of two Krupps (75 m/m)
and two more pom-poms, sent across under charge of the Vryheid men to
their position to the south.

[Footnote 90: See map No. 5.]

[Sidenote: The ground of Talana.]

Talana Hill, situated about 5,000 yards east of the British camp, from
which it was separated by the wir