On the 26th, finding that I could make a practicable approach, I crossed the guns and baggage back to the south side of the Tugela, took up the pontoon bridge on the night of the 26th, and relaid it at the new site....

On the 27th General Barton, with two battalions 6th Brigade and the Royal Dublin Fusiliers, crept about one and a half miles down the banks of the river, and, ascending an almost precipitous cliff of about 500 feet, assaulted and carried the top of Pieter's Hill.

This hill to a certain extent turned the enemy's left, and the 4th Brigade, under Colonel Norcott, and the 11th Brigade, under Colonel Kitchener, the whole under General Warren, assailed the enemy's main position, which was magnificently {p.301} carried by the South Lancashire Regiment about sunset." This handsome operation, which finally loosed the bonds in which Ladysmith was held, should perhaps be described in more detail than a telegram commonly admits.

At the lower end of the northerly stretch of the Tugela, below Colenso, where the river again turns east, the railroad, which has kept close to the west bank, also inclines east for a mile and a half, constrained still to cling to the stream by hills to the northward.

The more conspicuous of these had been named Terrace Hill and Railway Hill, and there it was that the British attacks of the 24th had been baffled.