inspection
and Louis Botha was given practically a free hand. Three weeks of
incessant labour had been spent on this task, the work being continued
up to the very eve of the battle. The trenches had been constructed
with remarkable ingenuity, so as to be almost invisible from the south
bank. They ran for the most part along the lower slopes of the great
hills on the west and across the flats round which circled the
amphitheatre. The only part of these defences which caught the eye
from the far side of the river were the tiers of entrenchments
covering the Colenso kopjes, and especially Fort Wylie. Emplacements
had been constructed in many more places than there were guns
available to fill them, and, in order to ensure that the exact
positions from which shells would be actually thrown should be unknown
to the British commander, the guns were shifted from gun-pit to
gun-pit the night before the battle. The artillery at the disposal of
General Botha was far less numerous than that of his opponent. On the
day of the fight a 120 m/m howitzer was mounted on the crest of
Vertnek (or Red Hill) on the right, a field gun being posted lower
down on its south-eastern slope. Two field guns were placed in pits in
proximity to the western Ladysmith road. This group of four guns was
intended to command the crossings in, and near, the western salient
loop of the river, including the Bridle Drift, a mile to the west of
that loop. Four or five 75 m/m field guns and one or two pom-poms,
posted on the Colenso kopjes, swept the bridges and drifts in front.
The whole of these guns were under the command of Captain Pretorius,
Transvaal Staats Artillerie. General Botha had placed his riflemen as
follows:--on his right, which extended to the west of H. Robinson's
farm, was stationed the Winburg commando of Free Staters under van der
Merwe, supported by detachments of Ben Viljoen's Johannesburgers, and
of the Middelburg commando; east of these, men of the Zoutpansberg,
Swaziland, and Ermelo commandos, under the orders of Christian Botha,
continued the line to the head of the western loop of the Tugela,
where a donga enters the river on its left bank. The eastern face of
this loop was also manned by portions of the Ermelo, Standerton, and
Middelburg corps. The ground intervening between the two re-entrants
was considered to be sufficiently protected by the unfordable river in
its front, save that a small detachment was posted in the building
sho