The Boers, whose force did not exceed a few thousands, were now rolled swiftly back through Northern Natal into their own country.  The long strain at Ladysmith had told upon them, and the men whom we had to meet were very different from the warriors of Spion Kop and Nicholson’s Nek.  They had done magnificently, but there is a limit to human endurance, and no longer would these peasants face the bursting lyddite and the bayonets of angry soldiers.  There is little enough for us to boast of in this.  Some pride might be taken in the campaign when at a disadvantage we were facing superior numbers, but now we could but deplore the situation in which these poor valiant burghers found themselves, the victims of a rotten government and of their own delusions.  Hofer’s Tyrolese, Charette’s Vendeans, or Bruce’s Scotchmen never fought a finer fight than these children of the veld, but in each case they combated a real and not an imaginary tyrant.  It is heart-sickening to think of the butchery, the misery, the irreparable losses, the blood of men, and the bitter tears of women, all of which might have been spared had one obstinate and ignorant man been persuaded to allow the State which he ruled to conform to the customs of every other civilised State upon the earth.

Buller was now moving with a rapidity and decision which contrast pleasantly with some of his earlier operations.  Although Dundee was only occupied on May 15th, on May 18th his vanguard was in Newcastle, fifty miles to the north.  In nine days he had covered 138 miles.  On the 19th the army lay under the loom of that Majuba which had cast its sinister shadow for so long over South African politics.  In front was the historical Laing’s Nek, the pass which leads from Natal into the Transvaal, while through it runs the famous railway tunnel.  Here the Boers had taken up that position which had proved nineteen years before to be too strong for British troops.  The Rooineks had come back after many days to try again.  A halt was called, for the ten days’ supplies which had been taken with the troops were exhausted, and it was necessary to wait until the railway should be repaired.  This gave time for Hildyard’s 5th Division and Lyttelton’s 4th Division to close up on Clery’s 2nd Division, which with Dundonald’s cavalry had formed our vanguard throughout.  The only losses of any consequence during this fine march fell upon a single squadron of Bethune’s mounted infantry, which being thrown out in the direction of Vryheid, in order to make sure that our flank was clear, fell into an ambuscade and was almost annihilated by a close-range fire.  Sixty-six casualties, of which nearly half were killed, were the result of this action, which seems to have depended, like most of our reverses, upon defective scouting.  Buller, having called up his two remaining divisions and having mended the railway behind him, proceeded now to manoeuvre the Boers out of Laing’s Nek exactly as he had manoeuvred them out of the Biggarsberg.  At the end of May Hildyard and Lyttelton were despatched in an eastern direction, as if there were an intention of turning the pass from Utrecht.