raised from the Militia, Yeomanry, and Volunteers; our Colonies promised further contingents; and the whole Empire awoke to its responsibilities.

By the end of the year the forces raised for purposes of war numbered no fewer than one hundred and twenty thousand men, and forty thousand more were added before many weeks had passed.

General Buller, after his reverse, rested his men and waited for reinforcements. Meanwhile he got into heliographic communication with General White, who reported, at the beginning of January, that he was very hard pressed. The Boers had made a terrific assault upon him, and had only been repelled after nearly seventeen hours' fighting.

Some of the entrenchments on Waggon Hill were three times carried, and as often retaken by our troops. The enemy was finally repulsed and driven out of our positions at the point of the bayonet. Clearly Buller must strike quickly, and strike hard, if Ladysmith was to be saved.

His reinforcements, under Sir Charles Warren, duly arrived, and he had been strengthened in artillery.

At last the cheering news came from his headquarters, on the 17th of January, that he had crossed the Tugela, practically without opposition, and occupied a strong position on the northern bank.

Several subsidiary actions followed, in which Lord Dundonald's mounted men, General Clery with a part

of Warren's force, and General Lyttelton were engaged. The Boers evacuated their trenches, and they were occupied by the British. On the night of Tuesday, January 23rd, Sir Charles Warren captured an important hill known as Spion Kop, which was believed to dominate the Boer position. In fact, General Buller telegraphed--" Warren is of opinion that he has rendered the Boer position untenable."

There were heavy losses in these operations-mostly in wounded-but it was felt that a very sensible advance had been made towards the great object in view. What, therefore, was the dismay of the public when it learned on the following day that Spion Kop, which had been wrested from the Boers at so heavy a cost, had been abandoned. The fact was that the Boers poured upon it so terrific an artillery fire that no troops could stay there and live.

Then came the still more disquieting and bewildering intelligence that Buller had re-crossed the Tugela and established himself in the camp he had occupied a month before. His second attempt to relieve Ladysmith, like the first, had failed.

A third move was made on February 5th. This time, Buller tried a double movement. On the front of the position a feint was made, while on the extreme right General Lyttelton's Brigade effected the passage of the river, surprised the enemy, and captured a hill forming part of the Brakfontein Range. Here again,

however, as at Spion Kop, the gain proved to be illusory, and once more, on the 8th of February, Buller retired across the Tugela.

It was impossible, he said, to entrench himself on the north bank, owing to the nature of the ground. He spent two days in trying to do so, but merely found that he was exposing his men to heavy guns fired from positions by which the British artillery was dominated. The third attempt had failed also.

CHAPTER VIII

AT SIR REDVERS BULLER'S HEADQUARTERS

ALL who were at De Aar early in November 1899, felt that they were occupying ground which was soon to become historic. Battles come more or less as lightning strikes, but in this case the great treasury of military stores which was accumulating there necessitated a concentration of force at this point, and such a combination must sooner or later attract the enemy.

This was not the sort of fighting-ground he is wont to choose, for we were in a wide level basin, whose hilly walls are very low and smooth, but we felt that he must come, because we menaced his frontier sixty miles away, and tempted him with such an amount of stores, guns, and ammunition as would enable him to prolong his warfare at least two months longer than his own resources would permit.

Every day that the Boers still delayed our camp grew stronger, though this was not the case before General Buller arrived at the Cape. Until then we had only the second battalion of the Yorkshire Light Infantry to protect half a million pounds' worth of

stores, but within forty-eight hours a battery and a half of artillery had arrived from England, to be followed by another half-battery from the Orange River.

Rumours of Boers in the neighbourhood, or crossing the river at various points, caused the officers to sleep in their boots at times, but all now felt better prepared, and even stories of attacks on the railway between us and the Cape caused only a thrill of pleasurable anticipation.

The British base of supplies was at Stellenbosch, near Capetown, with De Aar as the advanced post. The two formed, as it were, an arm, with the elbow at the Cape and the wrist at De Aar. In time, as the army pushed forward, it was proposed to build other advance posts farther north, and spread apart like the opened fingers of a hand. It was of intense interest to see a great post like this—a mushroom military capitalspring up much faster than weeds ever grow.

Five weeks before this was a village of some forty houses, two general merchandise shops, a church or two, a school, and a railway men's institute, or clubhouse. It had now become a railway junction where the trains from the Cape were broken up to reach the Natal coast on the east, and the Orange River, Johannesburg, &c., on the north. The villagers were the railway employés. All around the little bunch of cottages reached a great level desert plain tufted with