ck (a
porphyritic greenstone). The top is less than a mile in circumference,
depressed some sixty or seventy feet in the centre, so as to form a sort
of saucer-like basin. Here has been built a tiny cemetery, in which some
of the British soldiers who were killed lie buried, and hard by on the
spot where he fell, is a stone in memory of General Colley. The hill
proper is nearly nine hundred feet above its base, and the base about
six hundred feet above Laing's Nek, with which it is connected by a
gently sloping ridge less than a mile long. It takes an hour's steady
walking to reach the summit from the Nek; the latter part of the ascent
being steep, with an angle of from twenty to thirty degrees, and here
and there escarped into low faces of cliff in which the harder sandstone
strata are exposed.

The British general started on the night of Saturday, February 26, from
Prospect Camp, left two detachments on the way, and reached the top of
the hill, after some hard climbing up the steep west side, at 3 A.M.,
with something over four hundred men. When day broke, at 5 A.M., the
Boers below on the Nek were astonished to see British redcoats on the
sky-line of the hill high above them, and at first, thinking their
position turned, began to inspan their oxen and prepare for a retreat.
Presently, when no artillery played upon them from the hill, and no sign
of a hostile movement came from Prospect Camp in front of them to the
south, they took heart, and a small party started out, moved along the
ridge toward Majuba Hill, and at last, finding themselves still
unopposed, began to mount the hill itself. A second party supported this
forlorn hope, and kept up a fire upon the hill while the first party
climbed the steepest parts. Each set of skirmishers, as they came within
range, opened fire at the British above them, who, exposed on the upper
slope and along the edge of the top, offered an easy mark, while the
Boers, moving along far below, and in places sheltered by the
precipitous bits of the slope, where the hard beds of sandstone run in
miniature cliffs along the hillside, did not suffer in the least from
the irregular shooting which a few of the British tried to direct on
them. Thus steadily advancing, and firing as they advanced, the Boers
reached at last the edge of the hilltop, where the British had neglected
to erect any proper breastworks or shelter, and began to pour in their
bullets with still more deadly effect upon the