Desultory movements before Spion Kop.
On the 19th, in very leisurely manner, Sir Charles Warren began his infantry movement along the western foot of Spion Kop. That height was the pivot upon which the Boer centre rested; its slopes and precipices parted the two wings of the British army—the right wing under General Lyttelton at Potgieter's, watching the eastern face of the great mountain, the left wing, five miles away, watching the western face and endeavouring to work round it without delivering a frontal attack upon the works which crowned its ridges. The artillery vigorously shelled the Boer lines; the naval guns from Spearman's Hill enfiladed the eastern ridge of Spion Kop, and two brigades of British infantry in skirmishing formation pushed forward up the rocky slopes and ridges in the direction of Spion Kop, at once to guard the baggage from molestation and to occupy the enemy.
[Photo by Gregory.
[Jan. 19, 1900.
A few facts concerning Sir Charles Warren's career are given below the small portrait on page [215]. He was appointed by Lord Roberts (April 26, 1900) Military Governor of Griqualand West "while that part of the country is in a disturbed condition."
The transport was forwarded to Venter's Laager, an advance of four whole miles in the day, while the mildest kind of long-range fighting proceeded, and the troops wondered whether "make haste slowly"—"slowly" in this case being at the pace of the snail—was wise tactics. On the right of the British troops the Boers looked down from the hills—it might seem with ironical contempt—upon the half-hearted, purposeless moves of the great army below. They were active enough in ever extending their lines of defence to the north-east, whatever the British were doing. Yet, prudently guarding against possibilities, their heavy waggons were already on the road to the Free State and the Transvaal. Sir George White, they argued, might well break in upon their retreat if General Buller's army gained any success. In the afternoon the action slowly relaxed its vigour; the steady and continued rifle and cannon fire gave place to desultory sniping, and the troops bivouacked in their aerial perches among the rocky ridges.
BRITISH SOLDIERS TENDING BOERS AFTER THE BATTLE AT POTGIETER'S DRIFT. (See page [268].)