hesitating and already
demoralized troops in the saucer-like hollow beneath them. A charge with
the bayonet might even then have saved the day. But though the order was
given to fix bayonets, the order to charge did not follow. General
Colley fell shot through the head, while his forces broke and fled down
the steep declivities to the south and west, where many were killed by
the Boer fire. The British loss was ninety-two killed, one hundred and
thirty-four wounded, and fifty-nine taken prisoners; while the Boers,
who have given their number at four hundred and fifty, lost only one man
killed and five wounded. No wonder they ascribed their victory to a
direct interposition of Providence on their behalf.

The British visitor, to whom this explanation does not commend itself,
is stupefied when he sees the spot and hears the tale. Military
authorities, however, declare that it is an error to suppose that the
occupants of a height have, under circumstances like those of this
fight, the advantage which a height naturally seems to give them. It is,
they say, much easier for skirmishers to shoot from below at enemies
above, than for those above to pick off skirmishers below; and this fact
of course makes still more difference when the attacking force are
accustomed to hill-shooting, and the defenders above are not. But
allowing for both these causes, the attack could not have succeeded had
Laing's Nek been assailed from the front by the forces at Prospect Camp,
and probably would never have been made had the British on the hill
taken the offensive early in the day.

We reached the top of the mountain in a dense cloud, which presently
broke in a furious thunderstorm, the flash and the crash coming together
at the same moment, while the rain quickly turned the bottom of the
saucer-like hollow almost into a lake. When the storm cleared away, what
a melancholy sight was this little grassy basin strewn with loose
stones, and bearing in its midst the graves of the British dead enclosed
within a low wall! A remote and silent place, raised high in air above
the vast, bare, brown country which stretched away east, south, and west
without a trace of human habitation. A spot less likely to have become
the scene of human passion, terror and despair can hardly be imagined.
Yet it has taken its place among the most remarkable battlefields in
recent history, and its name has lived, and lives to-day, in men's minds
as a force of lamentable