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Updated: May 12, 2025
Having gained by stealth the positions that were supposed to command our outpost defences on Cæsar's Camp and Waggon Hill, they acted from that moment as if on the defensive, trusting for victory not to any forward movement of their own but to the belief that our men would give way, and might then be rolled back in panic upon Ladysmith by thousands of mounted Boers who awaited that turn of events to make their meditated dash.
He is invaded; his cattle have been seized by the Boer; his towns are shelled or captured; the most powerful force on which he relies for protection is isolated in Ladysmith; his capital is being loopholed and entrenched; Newcastle has been abandoned, Colenso has fallen, Estcourt is threatened; the possibility that the whole province will be overrun stares him in the face.
It was on Ladysmith that both Republics concentrated their first efforts. Here, where the railways join, the armies of the Free State and the Transvaal were to unite, and the capture of the town was to seal their union. It is now certain that Ladysmith was an essential to the carefully thought out Boer plan of campaign.
Symons, whom he instructed to withdraw southwards unless he felt his position to be absolutely secure, was at his own urgent request allowed to remain. Next day, October 19, Elandslaagte, on the railway between Ladysmith and Dundee, was occupied by a Boer commando, and it was reported that 4,000 burghers were ready to cross the Buffalo River at Jager's Drift during the night.
There has been gloom over Ladysmith to-day, which blazing sunshine cannot dispel, and Colonials in their anger use strong language, for which a temperature of 107° in the shade may be in some measure accountable. Mr.
The reader may remember that we started post haste from Cape Town, and, having the good fortune to pass along the southern frontier from De Aar to Stormberg by the last train before the interruption of traffic, had every hope of reaching Ladysmith while its investment was incomplete.
Now that Ladysmith is rescued and there are certainly enough troops in South Africa to finish the business up, I do not see that it is our duty to continue our service. Anyhow, I have pretty well made up my mind to resign and go round to Cape Town.
But brave as they are, they will never force their way through these hills. They will never get to Ladysmith. Well, perhaps we shall meet some day in Johannesburg again." "Yes, doctor. I suppose we shall be taken up in waggons?" "You will, for a time, certainly. But I don't know about your friend." "Oh, do order him to be sent up with me, doctor, that is, if it will not hurt him too much.
On the Continent also their resistance attracted the utmost interest, and the numerous journals there who find the imaginative writer cheaper than the war correspondent announced their capture periodically as they had once done that of Ladysmith.
They had crossed the Tugela, they had relieved Ladysmith, they had forced Laing's Nek, and now it was to them that the honour had fallen of following the enemy into this last fastness.
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