e-intersected environs of Dundee and
by the sunken bed of the Sand Spruit, was peculiarly adapted for
defence. From the summit a precipitous rocky face dropped on the
Dundee side to a nearly flat terrace, 160 feet below it, whose fifty
to eighty yards of width were commanded throughout by the
boulder-strewn brow of the mountain. A low stone wall bounded this
terrace at its outer edge, immediately below which the hillside again
fell suddenly, affording from ten to fifteen yards of ground dead to
the crest directly above it, but vulnerable to fire, both from Lennox
Hill, a slightly higher eminence on the other side of a Nek to the
south-east, and from a salient protruding from the northern extremity
of the hill. From the wall bounding the upper terrace, however, other
walls, running downhill, intersected this face of the mountain at
right angles, and served as low traverses affording some protection
from flanking fire. These formed the enclosures of Smith's farm, a
group of tree-encircled buildings around an open space at the base of
the mountain, near its centre, and some 400 feet below its summit.
Below, and on either side of the homestead stood copses of eucalyptus
trees, which, roughly in all some 500 yards square, occupied the top
of the glacis whose base was the Sand Spruit, which 800 yards of bare
and open grassland separated from the edge of the wood.[91]

[Footnote 91: A sketch of the position, as seen from the side
of the British advance from Dundee, will be found in the case
of maps accompanying this volume.]

[Sidenote: Symons receives the news.]

Such was the position crowned by the Boer commandos in the first light
of October 20th. Swift as had been its captors, news of their success
was at once in the hands of the British commander. At 3 a.m. a
sergeant from Grimshaw's piquet, which had been surprised at the cross
roads, hurried into camp and reported the approach of the enemy in
force across the veld. Sir W. Penn Symons thereupon ordered two
companies of the Dublin Fusiliers to turn out in support. The rest of
the camp slept undisturbed, and the two companies, stumbling through
the dark and obstructed suburbs of Dundee, gained the shelter of the
Sand Spruit, where they found Grimshaw already arrived. The first
shots had stampeded his horses, which had galloped back to Smith's
Nek, the col between Talana and Lennox Hills. Retiring on foot, the
piquet had gained the Nek, recover