The horse-shoe, in its irregular curve, is dotted here and there with outposts, whose duty it is to keep the enemy’s sharpshooters from getting within rifle range of our artillery positions encrusting the ridges at several points like nails of the horse-shoe. Without locating them exactly, one may say that the Naval batteries are on rough eminences of the northern heel, facing Rietfontein Hill, where the Creusot gun, known as “Long Tom,” is mounted behind earthworks at a range of 6800 yards, which is well within compass of the Powerful’s 12-pounders and at least 3000 yards less than the extreme distance at which shells from her 4.7-inch quick-firing guns would be effective.
Positions for field batteries are prepared at other points round the wide sweep, but only to be occupied as occasion may arise, and therefore one does not care at present to locate them more precisely. The enemy, having heavy artillery of various calibre mounted on Bulwaan, is able to enfilade certain posts held by our infantry pickets on the heels of the horse-shoe, but there are folds among the rocky kopjes where men can lie comparatively screened from shells, which at that distance give timely notice of their coming, as sound travels rather faster than the projectiles do at the end of their flight.
We have outposts on Intombi or Maiden’s Castle, which forms the horse-shoe’s southern heel, others stretching westward thence to a gap in the toe of the shoe, through which a wood runs nearly due west until it branches off to the Drakensberg Passes in one direction and Maritzburg in the other, and pickets on the north-western and northern heights, with a detached post at Observation Hill, an elongated kopje outside the general defences, overlooking a wide valley of mimosa scrub towards Rietfontein, which