Dundonald’s cavalry force pushed rapidly forwards, crossed the Little Tugela, a tributary of the main river, at Springfield, and established themselves upon the hills which command the drift.  Dundonald largely exceeded his instructions in going so far, and while we applaud his courage and judgment in doing so, we must remember and be charitable to those less fortunate officers whose private enterprise has ended in disaster and reproof.  There can be no doubt that the enemy intended to hold all this tract, and that it was only the quickness of our initial movements which forestalled them.  Early in the morning a small party of the South African Horse, under Lieutenant Carlisle, swam the broad river under fire and brought back the ferry boat, an enterprise which was fortunately bloodless, but which was most coolly planned and gallantly carried out.  The way was now open to our advance, and could it have been carried out as rapidly as it had begun the Boers might conceivably have been scattered before they could concentrate.  It was not the fault of the infantry that it was not so.  They were trudging, mud-spattered and jovial, at the very heels of the horses, after a forced march which was one of the most trying of the whole campaign.  But an army of 20,000 men cannot be conveyed over a river twenty miles from any base without elaborate preparations being made to feed them.  The roads were in such a state that the wagons could hardly move, heavy rain had just fallen, and every stream was swollen into a river; bullocks might strain, and traction engines pant, and horses die, but by no human means could the stores be kept up if the advance guard were allowed to go at their own pace.  And so, having ensured an ultimate crossing of the river by the seizure of Mount Alice, the high hill which commands the drift, the forces waited day after day, watching in the distance the swarms of strenuous dark figures who dug and hauled and worked upon the hillsides opposite, barring the road which they would have to take.  Far away on the horizon a little shining point twinkled amid the purple haze, coming and going from morning to night.  It was the heliograph of Ladysmith, explaining her troubles and calling for help, and from the heights of Mount Alice an answering star of hope glimmered and shone, soothing, encouraging, explaining, while the stern men of the veld dug furiously at their trenches in between.  ’We are coming!  We are coming!’ cried Mount Alice.  ‘Over our bodies,’ said the men with the spades and mattocks.

On Thursday, January 12th, Dundonald seized the heights, on the 13th the ferry was taken and Lyttelton’s Brigade came up to secure that which the cavalry had gained.  On the 14th the heavy naval guns were brought up to cover the crossing.  On the 15th Coke’s Brigade and other infantry concentrated at the drift.  On the 16th the four regiments of Lyttelton’s Brigade went across, and then, and only then, it began to be apparent that Buller’s