With Buller in Natal, Or, a Born Leader eBook

No more unsuitable place for a military camp could well have been selected than Ladysmith, which had indeed been chosen, years before the war was thought of, on account of its position on the railway, and the vicinity of the Klip river.  The fact that the country immediately round was fertile and forage was obtainable no doubt influenced the military authorities in their selection.  Lying in the heart of a mountainous country, it was commanded by steep and rocky hills at a distance of from two to four miles.  Just as many castles built in the days before firearms were in use were rendered untenable against even the clumsy cannon of early days placed on eminences near, so the improvement in artillery and the possession of powerful modern guns by the Boers had gravely imperilled the position of Ladysmith.  The military authorities could never have anticipated that the town would be besieged by foes armed with artillery that could carry over five miles.  But such was the case now, and all there felt, as soon as it was decided to defend the place till the last, that the position was a precarious one.

Fortunately, a considerable store of provisions had been collected, and so long as the line was open additions were being sent up by every train.  The line was a single one, winding along through passes among the hills, and therefore open to attack by small bodies of the enemy.  In point of size Ladysmith was the third largest town in Natal.  Durban boasted a population of thirty thousand, Pietermaritzburg of twenty thousand, and Ladysmith of four thousand five hundred, being four hundred larger than that of Dundee.  It was the point at which the line of railway forked, one branch running north through Glencoe to the Transvaal, the other northwest through Van Reenen’s Pass to Bloemfontein.  It was a pretty straggling town with its barracks, government buildings and large stores.  Almost all the houses were detached and standing in their own gardens, and as these were largely wooded its appearance was very picturesque, with the Klip river, a branch of the Tugela, running through it.  The houses were, for the most part, one-storied, and the roofs were all painted white for the sake of coolness.  No perfectly open town had ever before undergone a siege by an army of some thirty thousand men provided with excellent guns, and yet the garrison awaited the result with perfect confidence.

CHAPTER VII

LADYSMITH BESIEGED

On the 30th, the Boers being now in force on many of the hills around the town, and having inflicted the first annoyance upon Ladysmith by cutting the conduit that brought down the water-supply to the town from a reservoir among the hills, and so forced it for the future to depend upon a few wells and the muddy water of the river, it was determined to make an effort to drive them back and to gain possession of some of the hills from which it was now evident