great thoroughness.  I watched this proceeding of making ‘sicker’ from the heights.  The drift was approached from the ground where we had bivouacked by a long, steep, descending valley.  At nine o’clock the whole of Hart’s Brigade poured down this great gutter and extended near the water.  The bridge was growing fast—­span after span of pontoons sprang out at the ends as it lay along the bank.  Very soon it would be long enough to tow into position across the flood.  Moreover, the infantry of the West Yorks and Devons had mostly been ferried across, and were already occupying the lately well-shelled farms and woods.  At eleven o’clock the bridge was finished, the transported infantry were spreading up the hills, and Woodgate’s Brigade moved forward down the valley.

It soon became time for the cavalry to cross, but they were not accommodated, as were the infantry, with a convenient bridge, About a quarter of a mile down stream from Trichardt’s Drift there is a deep and rather dangerous ford, called the Waggon Drift.  Across this at noon the mounted men began to make their way, and what with the uneven bottom and the strong current there were a good many duckings.  The Royal Dragoons mounted on their great horses, indeed, passed without much difficulty, but the ponies of the Light Horse and Mounted Infantry were often swept off their feet, and the ridiculous spectacle of officers and men floundering in the torrent or rising indignantly from the shallows provided a large crowd of spectators—­who had crossed by the bridge—­with a comedy.  Tragedy was not, however, altogether excluded, for a trooper of the 13th Hussars was drowned, and Captain Tremayne, of the same regiment, who made a gallant attempt to rescue him, was taken from the water insensible.

During the afternoon the busy Engineers built a second bridge across the river, and by this and the first the artillery, the ammunition columns, and the rest of the mass of wheeled transport defiled.  All that day and through the night this monotonous business of passing the waggons across continued.  The cavalry had bivouacked—­all tents and even waterproofs were now left behind—­within the infantry picket lines, and we awoke at the break of day expecting to hear the boom of the first gun.  ’Quite right to wait until there was a whole day to make the attack in.  Suppose that was the reason we did not hurry yesterday.’  But no guns fired near Trichardt’s Drift, and only the frontal force at Potgieter’s began its usual bombardment.  Sir Charles Warren, moreover, said that his artillery had not finished crossing—­one battery still to cross—­and that there was no hurry.  Deliberation was the order of the day.  So again everyone was puzzled, and not a few were critical, for in modern times everyone thinks, and even a native camp follower has his views on tactics and strategy.  A very complete consolation awaited the cavalry.  All that Warren did with his infantry on this day, the 18th, was to creep cautiously forward