Between Grobler's and the northerly stretch of the river ran the railroad to Ladysmith, threading a maze of hills which a stay of three months had made intimately familiar to the Boers, both men and officers.

The accidents of the ground, and their mutual influence from the military point of view, had been carefully studied and artificially improved, by men whose natural aptitudes for defensive warfare and choice of positions is of the highest.

In nothing do they seem to have shown more skill than in the preparation of traps, {p.296} whereby success, won with just sufficient difficulty to seem plausibly brilliant, turns at the very moment of apparent victory into hopeless disaster, entailing either destruction or retreat.
Into this tangle of obstacles the British forces were now about to enter.

Colenso, found to be evacuated on February 19, was occupied on the 20th.

A reconnaissance pushed across the bridge showed that the kopjes about Fort Wylie, now rendered untenable by the loss of Hlangwane, were but weakly held and their guns gone.