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Updated: June 4, 2025
On the dun-coloured plains before the town, the long thin lines, with an occasional shifting sparkle of steel, showed where Hamilton's and Grimwood's infantry were advancing. In the clear cold air of an African morning every detail could be seen, down to the distant smoke of a train toiling up the heavy grades which lead from Frere over the Colenso Bridge to Ladysmith.
With 1811 was born the era of Charles Peace, no less than of John Bull on Sundays and Saint's days a churchwarden, who carried the plate; on week days a burglar who lifted it. Truly, as John Mitchel said on his convict hulk: "On English felony the sun never sets." May it set in 1915. From Napoleon's downfall to the battle of Colenso, the Empire founded by Henry VIII has swelled to monstrous size.
Nearly a month had elapsed since the evil day when his infantry had retired, and his ten guns had not, from the frontal attack upon Colenso. Since then Sir Charles Warren's division of infantry and a considerable reinforcement of artillery had come to him.
Colenso, under the plea of the progress of science, assume that no alteration has taken place in either desert or climate but a scientific examination of the subject would have ascertained what the country was then when it afforded pasture to "flocks and herds, and even very much cattle."
Two days later all were settled at Chieveley again, and it was generally believed that the next attack would take place very shortly, and that it would probably be directed against Colenso. That evening a farmer came into camp. His horse had dropped dead a mile away. He stopped, as he passed through the tents of the scouts, and asked where he could find the general.
The attack on the enemy's right, which was believed to be weak, was assigned to Hart's Irish Brigade. He was instructed to cross the Tugela at a bridle drift about two miles west of Colenso and work down the left bank towards the occupied kopjes.
He ordered Talbot Coke with the 10th Brigade of Warren's Division to pass over the Colenso Kopjes on to the open ground beyond, from which the Onderbroek valley could be enfiladed by artillery. He had received information that the enemy were there in force, and in the belief that "what Boers there were, were hiding in that kloof," he changed his plan of moving northwards at once on Wynne's Hill.
He poured scorn on the newspapers which glorified "the great sexual insurrection of the Anglo-Teutonic race," and the author who extolled the domestic life of Mormonism. "Mr. Hepworth Dixon may almost be called the Colenso of Love and Marriage such a revolution does he make in our ideas on these matters, just as Dr. Colenso does in our ideas on religion."
Colenso, Spion Kop, Vaal Krantz, and the third day at Pieters were not inspiring memories, and though everyone was cheered by the good news of the entanglement of Cronje's army on the western side, yet it was felt that the attempt to be made on the morrow would be the last effort the Natal Field Army would be asked or allowed to make.
But the sequel is still more amusing and instructive. Colenso, in his innocent sincerity, took the side of the Zulus, and feeling sure the Church at home would be quite glad to have its views with regard to the accuracy of Bible statistics corrected, wrote a book embodying the amendments needed.
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