The public at large were occupied considerably in counting the number of soldiers that had sailed from England, computing the speed of the ships and fixing the dates of their arrival at the ports for which they were destined, and the concern was not great as to the mobility of the troops, the confinement of the columns to railroad lines easily interrupted, and the immense impediment in the indispensable stores heaped at the points of debarkation, as in our attack upon the Spaniards in Cuba we were overwhelmed at the point of embarkation. The army with which the British Commander-in-Chief moved in the direction of Ladysmith was about the same size as that under Major-General Shafter that scrambled aboard ship at Tampa and landed at Santiago.
As Sir Redvers Buller marched to attempt the passage of the Tugela River, he had to encounter the discouragements of the bloody repulses of both columns co-operating with him, and especially the depressing experience of Lord Methuen on the Modder River; and he had also at last to report as the others had done, a "serious reverse."
A NATIVE DISPATCH CARRIER OVERTAKEN BY THE BOERS
GENERAL LORD METHUEN,
British Commander, Battle of Modder River.
GENERAL SIR GEORGE WHITE, V.C.,
Commander British Forces, Battle of Ladysmith.
The Boers Selected Their Time Judiciously
There is to be remarked a strong family likeness in all the combats unfortunate for the British—the desperate storming of fortified hills, the half blind flank movements, seemingly seeking to get into ambuscades—the columns by companies charging into zones of rifle fire, Mausers in the hands of marksmen; the vain hammering with artillery not all of the latest pattern and longest range—the certain, fatal, frontal advance, because there was no other way, as the ground lay, for the work required to be done; and there were, more than all, rivers booming between rugged banks, rocks serving the Boers for shelter and rests for their rifles, and a perfect exposure of the masses of the British to the searching fire of the expert riflemen. The Boers had selected their time for beginning the war, and judiciously placed it when the open country was green with grass for their ponies, and their forces were wafted about almost as swiftly as the winds,—while the British were fettered to lines of rails readily obstructed, and repeated misfortunes taught the limits of usefulness of armored trains, perils from the mad panic of green drivers with greener mules; the fact slowly learned by old soldiers that the rifles in hand often outranged the artillery, the next to impossible fording of rivers in the face of rifle fire, making the attempts an invitation to slaughter, no matter what the merits of the troops even if the best the world ever saw; and all the while the pressure of the bitter necessity of groping gallantly along the gloomy paths that, as we read in Gray's Elegy, "lead but to the grave," though they shine with glory.