[Illustration: OFFICERS OF THE GERMAN CORPS UNDER GENERAL LOUIS BOTHA.]
It would be supposed that this discovery might have been made by a personal reconnaissance two days earlier, as soon as General Warren's troops had effected their passage at Trichardt's Drift. The saving of these two days might well have meant the difference between victory and defeat. Even if the maps were bad--and General Buller described the march as a march "into an unknown country," while it is a fact that Spion Kop was not shown in the sketch of the country round Ladysmith, issued by the Intelligence Department--an examination of the lie of the land by the generals must have disclosed on the 17th what does not appear to have been realised till the evening of the 19th. The desperate straits of Ladysmith rendered prompt and rapid action of the most vital importance. Yet two days were spent in bringing the transport across, and then in making the discovery that it was the most dangerous encumbrance and had better have been left on the south side of the Tugela.
[Illustration: _F. C. Dickinson._] [_After a sketch by a British officer._
In this sketch the Boer position is along the crests of the hills. Halfway up the hill near the centre the British are seen advancing; on the nearer hill are two batteries of Royal Artillery, and the Lancasters and Lancashire Fusiliers "sniping"; in the foreground the ambulances. In the actual battle little or no smoke was to be seen; it has been exaggerated in the sketch in order to make the positions clear.]
On the 19th there had been nothing more than long-range skirmishing in which the British losses were comparatively small. On the 20th it was determined to force the attack. Accordingly, on the night of the 19th, General Warren instructed General Clery, with General Hart's and General Woodgate's Brigades, and the six field batteries, to push the advance on the extreme left, against the enemy's positions on the long ridge which ran down from Spion Kop to the north-east. The ground over which the British troops were to advance is described as a succession of ridges, intersected at right angles by watercourses, cutting deep gorges in the mountain side, and thus sundering and separating the attacking force. Of shelter there was little or none; the advance had to be made from ridge to ridge, always under the fire of the vigilant enemy.