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Updated: June 12, 2025
When they almost touched the summit they paused, formed their broken lines, and carefully and wisely topped the black brow; and as they did so the Boer rifles spoke from a line of kopjes that lay behind the first. Then our fellows dropped to cover, and sent an answer back that a duller foe than the Boers would not have failed to understand.
Considerable movements of troops were made. Colenso and the kopjes about Fort Wylie were converted into a bridgehead, garrisoned by Talbot Coke's Brigade. A new line of communications was opened around the foot of Hlangwani. Hildyard's English Brigade stood fast on the advanced low kopjes forming the extreme left of the line.
And along the rocky pathway, that was a short cut to Edwardstown and led along a low ledge of kopjes commanding a lovely view of the valley which lay between the Mission Station and Zimbabwe's lofty northern mountain, Meryl walked slowly, with a sense of desolation she could neither gauge nor dispel; and over and over through her mind as she looked to the far kopjes passed the lines of England's strong woman-poet, Emily Brontë: "What have those lonely mountains worth revealing?
The veld around the Riet water-holes is just a mass of small kopjes and rocks; it narrows to a small defile that opens suddenly on to the coverless Husab Road. This defile is the only main approach to the Riet wells, and it is commanded close up on both flanks on the right by the great bare kopje, Langer Heinreich, on the other by small kopjes and a line of ridges.
A party of Boers, however, got round one of the kopjes, where some of the Lancers were posted, and now half a dozen of those brave fellows are missing, and I fear they are to be counted amongst those who will never return again.
As events have turned out, this was the gravest mischance of all, since the next step which our wily enemies took was to close every means of egress from this camp by placing their lighter artillery or mounted riflemen on kopjes whence all open ground over which troops might move could be swept by cross-fire.
Meryl sat very still, with her hands lightly clasped on her knees, and her eyes always always to the lovely prospect that was like a mighty ocean in which the waves were blue, mystical kopjes; and over which the first clouds, that heralded the approach of the rainy season, shed entrancing lights and shadows.
The lightning played incessantly and sheets of rain blotted out the kopjes and the veldt from view. It was in weather like this that our poor fellows advanced through the darkness upon the Magersfontein trenches! At Orange River we halted for some time, and somebody suggested a snake hunt in the scrub, but no one seemed very keen about this form of sport.
About two miles from the head of the plain the main body was halted to allow the guns from the left to rejoin us, but Broadwood's brigade continued the gallop to the very top of the pass on the left, and the 12th Lancers dismounted and held the kopjes in front. The right front was held by the Household Composite and Gordon's Lancers." After a brief stop to re-assemble the march was resumed.
Sir Redvers Buller's plan was as follows: On the 22nd he had taken the low kopjes, and his powerful artillery gave him complete command of the river gorge.
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