their command were heavier than any which could be placed against them.  This was made more clear on October 21st, the day after the battle, when the force, having withdrawn overnight from the useless hill which they had captured, moved across to a fresh position on the far side of the railway.  At four in the afternoon a very heavy gun opened from a distant hill, altogether beyond the extreme range of our artillery, and plumped shell after shell into our camp.  It was the first appearance of the great Creusot.  An officer with several men of the Leicesters, and some of our few remaining cavalry, were bit.  The position was clearly impossible, so at two in the morning of the 22nd the whole force was moved to a point to the south of the town of Dundee.  On the same day a reconnaissance was made in the direction of Glencoe Station, but the passes were found to be strongly occupied, and the little army marched back again to its original position.  The command had fallen to Colonel Yule, who justly considered that his men were dangerously and uselessly exposed, and that his correct strategy was to fall back, if it were still possible, and join the main body at Ladysmith, even at the cost of abandoning the two hundred sick and wounded who lay with General Symons in the hospital at Dundee.  It was a painful necessity, but no one who studies the situation can have any doubt of its wisdom.  The retreat was no easy task, a march by road of some sixty or seventy miles through a very rough country with an enemy pressing on every side.  Its successful completion without any loss or any demoralisation of the troops is perhaps as fine a military exploit as any of our early victories.  Through the energetic and loyal co-operation of Sir George White, who fought the actions of Elandslaagte and of Rietfontein in order to keep the way open for them, and owing mainly to the skillful guidance of Colonel Dartnell, of the Natal Police, they succeeded in their critical manoeuvre.  On October 23rd they were at Beith, on the 24th at Waselibank Spruit, on the 25th at Sunday River, and next morning they marched, sodden with rain, plastered with mud, dog-tired, but in the best of spirits, into Ladysmith amid the cheers of their comrades.  A battle, six days without settled sleep, four days without a proper meal, winding up with a single march of thirty-two miles over heavy ground and through a pelting rain storm—­that was the record of the Dundee column.  They had fought and won, they had striven and toiled to the utmost capacity of manhood, and the end of it all was that they had reached the spot which they should never have left.  But their endurance could not be lost—­no worthy deed is ever lost.  Like the light division, when they marched their fifty odd unbroken miles to be present at Talavera, they leave a memory and a standard behind them which is more important than success.  It is by the tradition of such sufferings and such endurance that others in other days are nerved to do the like.