Officers and men, doctors and patients, presented alike a most melancholy and even ghastly appearance.  Men had been wounded, had been cured of their wounds, and had died simply because there was no nourishing food to restore their strength.  Others had become convalescent from fever, but had succumbed from depression and lack of medical comforts.  Hundreds required milk and brandy, but there was only water to give them.  The weak died:  at one time the death rate averaged fifteen a day.  Nearly a tenth of the whole garrison died of disease.  A forest of crosses, marking the graves of six hundred men, sprang up behind the camp.

It was a painful thing to watch the hungry patients, so haggard and worn that their friends could scarcely recognise them; and after a visit to Intombi I sat and gloated for an hour at the long train of waggons filled with all kinds of necessary comforts which crawled along the roads, and the relief of Ladysmith seemed more than ever worth the heavy price we had paid.

On the evening after Buller’s victorious army had entered the town I went to see Sir George White, and was so fortunate as to find him alone and disengaged.  The General received me in a room the windows of which gave a wide view of the defences.  Bulwana, Caesar’s Camp, Waggon Hill lay before us, and beneath—­for the house stood on high ground—­spread the blue roofs of Ladysmith.  From the conversation that followed, and from my own knowledge of events, I shall endeavour to explain so far as is at present possible the course of the campaign in Natal; and I will ask the reader to observe that only the remarks actually quoted should be attributed to the various officers.

Sir George White told me how he had reached Natal less than a week before the declaration of war.  He found certain arrangements in progress to meet a swiftly approaching emergency, and he had to choose between upsetting all these plans and entirely reconstructing the scheme of defence, or of accepting what was already done as the groundwork of his operations.

Sir Penn Symons, who had been commanding in the Colony, and who was presumably best qualified to form an opinion on the military necessities, extravagantly underrated the Boer fighting power.  Some of his calculations of the force necessary to hold various places seem incredible in the light of recent events.  But everyone was wrong about the Boers, and the more they knew the worse they erred.  Symons laughed at the Boer military strength, and laboured to impress his opinions on Sir George White, who having Hamilton’s South African experience to fall back on, however, took a much more serious view of the situation, and was particularly disturbed at the advanced position of the troops at Dundee.  He wanted to withdraw them.  Symons urged the opposite considerations vehemently.  He was a man of great personal force, and his manner carried people with him.  ‘Besides,’ said the General, with a kindling eye and extraordinary emphasis, ’he was a good, brave fighting man, and you know how much that is worth in war.’