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Updated: June 14, 2025
Soon after crossing the Transvaal border we passed the battle fields of Laing's Nek, Majuba Hill, and Ingogo, names indelibly associated with one of the saddest, as well as most humiliating, episodes of English modern military history, in connection with the Transvaal War of 1881.
It will be seen on a map that North Natal forms a fairly regular isoceles triangle, having Charlestown, Majuba, and Laing's Nek at the apex, the Drakensberg range separating it from the Free State on the one side, and the Buffalo River with its lower hills separating it from the Transvaal on the other.
On our arrival at Laing's Nek a Council of War was immediately held to decide our future plans. We now found ourselves once more on the old battlefields of 1880 and 1881, where Boer and Briton had met 20 years before to decide by trial of arms who should be master of the S. A. Republic.
Between Botha's Pass and Laing's Nek the dominant contours roughly assume the outline of a sickle and its handle, the Pass being at the end of the handle and the Nek near the point of the blade. Within the curve of the blade stands the high Inkwelo Mountain facing Majuba Hill, and at the upper end of the handle is a mountain of less elevation called Inkweloane.
Meanwhile you have done good service to the State, and you shall have your reward, cousin. If I am President" he laid emphasis on this, the meaning of which his listener did not miss "if by the support of my followers I become President, I will not forget you. And now I must up-saddle and ride back. I want to be at Laing's Nek in sixty hours, to wait for General Wood's answer.
I cited the Titicaca image, and he knew all about that. He spoke of Quaternary man, and I was with him all the time. Each was more and more amazed at the fulness and the accuracy of the information of the other, until like a flash the explanation crossed my mind. "You are reading Samuel Laing's 'Human Origins'!" I cried.
He then, not being able to ascend or trace the Niger viâ Jinnee, on account of the objections of the people, made a détour through The Desert, wishing to go to Senegambia, when, after four days' journey, he was stopped by a party of Arabs, and murdered. Some persist in saying, that Caillié found Major Laing's papers, and gave them as his own account of Timbuctoo.
Laing's reading and his profound grasp of all that he has read, when they are told casually that "space and time are, ... to use the phraseology of Kant, 'imperative categories;" but perhaps to other readers it may convey nothing more than that he has heard a dim something somewhere about Kant, about the categories, about space and time being schemata of sense, and about the categorical imperative.
It is true that the Government, acting under pressure from the Aborigines Protection Society, made, on the occasion of the Surrender, a feeble effort to secure the independence of some of the native tribes; but when the Boer leaders told them shortly that they would have nothing of the sort, and that, if they were not careful, they would reoccupy Laing's Nek, the proposal was at once dropped, with many assurances that no offence was intended.
Laing's preface to the sixth volume of Knox's Works, p. lxii. Works, vi. 534. Ibid. iv. 220. Ibid. iii. 380. Ibid. iv. 220. Works, iii. 380. Ibid. iv. 238. Works, iv. 240. Works, vi. 513, 514. Works, vi. 11. Works, vi. 21, 101, 108, 130. Ibid. vi. 83. Ibid. vi. 129. Ibid. vi. 532. Works, i. 246.
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