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January 24, 1900. The entire interest of the day was centred on Taba Nyama that black mountain, commanding the famous drift in its front and the stretch of plain behind. It is fifteen miles away. From Observation Hill one could see the British shells bursting along this ridge all morning, as well as in the midst of the Boer tents half-way down the double peaks, and at the foot of the hill.
When he endeavoured to trot or canter a cough took him fit to break his mother's heart. January 29, 1900. The only change to-day was the steady passage of Boers westward, to concentrate afresh round Taba Nyama. Their new laager up the Long Valley had disappeared. Large bodies of men had been seen coming up from Colenso. The crisis of the war in Natal is evidently near.
His accession to the throne, or rather his usurpation of the sovereignty, a hundred and seventy-one years before the coming of Christ; his attempt to plunder the temple of Diana at Ephesus; his implacable hostility to the Jews; his pollution of the Holy of Holies; and his miserable death at Taba, after a tumultuous reign of eleven years, are circumstances of a prominent kind, and therefore more generally noticed by the historians of his time than the impious, dastardly, cruel, silly, and whimsical achievements which make up the sum total of his private life and reputation.
When thus formed, it is called Tapa or Taba, a name by which it is generally known among all the islands of the Pacific. It is afterwards beautifully coloured, sometimes by a stamp, at others by painting it by hand, when it is known as Gnatu. A coarser kind, worn by the common people, is made from the bark of the bread-fruit tree.
And when I told them that their previous description of Taba cheu had led me to expect something of the sort, I found that the idea of a cloud-capped mountain had never entered into their heads.
The noise of guns boomed all day from the Tugela. It sounded as though a battle was raging along miles of its banks, from Colenso right away west to Potgieter's Drift. I could see big shells bursting again on Taba Nyama and the low nek above the ford. Further to the left they were bursting around Monger's Hill, nearly half-way along the bank to Colenso.
This was done by muttering a few sentences, and spitting upon a stone, thrown before them on the road. Having repeated this operation three times, the negroes proceeded with assurance off safety. Riding along, they came to a large tree, called by the natives neema taba.
Rain fell, and though the air afterwards was strangely clear, the heliograph could not be used till the afternoon. We were left in uncertainty. Shells were bursting along the ridge of Taba Nyama, on the double peaks and the Boer tents below. Only on the highest point in the centre we could see no firing, and that in itself was hopeful. About 8 a.m. the fire slackened and ceased.
No message or tidings came through. The day was cloudy, and ended in quiet rain. We saw a few shells fall on the plain at the foot of Taba Nyama, and what looked like a few on the summit. But nothing else could be made out, except that the Boer ambulances were very busy driving round. Among ourselves the chief event was the feverish activity of the Telegraph Hill big gun.
It is true a heliogram to-day tells us there are seventy-four big waggons waiting at Frere for our relief milk, vegetables, forage, eleven waggons of rum, fifty cases of whisky, 5,000 cigarettes, and so on. But all depends upon those parallels, so slowly advancing against Taba Nyama, and our insides are being sapped and mined far more quickly.
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