their western and southern borders in force sufficient to make a
pretence of occupying a large extent of territory in which only the
important posts specially prepared by the British for defence continue
to hold out. Of these posts, however, Mafeking and Kimberley are as yet
the only ones that have been attacked or threatened.

For operations in the northern corner of Natal the Boer commander was
able to collect some thirty thousand men, who on the eve of hostilities
were posted in separate columns upon the various routes leading from the
Free State and from the Transvaal into the triangle of northern Natal.
This triangle is like a letter _A_, the cross-stroke being the range of
hills known as the Biggarsberg, which is intersected near the centre on
a north and south line by the head-stream of the Waschbank River forming
a pass through which run the railway and the Dundee-Ladysmith road.
North of the Biggarsberg the gates of the frontier are Muller's Pass,
Botha's Pass, the Charlestown road, Wool's Drift, and De Jager's Drift,
of which Landman's Drift is a wicket-gate. At each of these points,
except perhaps Muller's Drift, of which I have seen no specific mention,
the Boers had a column waiting. South of the Biggarsberg are on the
east Rorke's Drift, and on the west the passes of Ollivier's Hoek,
Bezuidenhout, Tintwa, Van Reenen, De Beers, Bramkock, and Collins. At
all these points there were Boer gatherings, though on the west the Free
Staters, having their headquarters at Albertina, were likely to put
their main column on the road leading through Van Reenen's Pass to
Ladysmith.

By Thursday morning the Boer advance had developed. The columns from
Botha's Pass, Charlestown, and Wool's Drift had advanced through
Newcastle, where they had converged, and moved south along the main
road. The Landman's Drift column had moved towards Dundee, the Rorke's