Twelve weeks to-day since Black Monday, when our isolation really began! A heliogram came from Buller to say all was going well, and in this evening's Orders we were officially informed that relief is "within measurable distance." I don't know about time, but in space that measurable distance is hardly more than fifteen miles. From Observation Hill I again watched the British shells breaking over the ridge above the ford. The Boers had moved one of their waggon laagers a little further back, but the main camps were unchanged. With a telescope I could make out where their hospital was--in a cottage by a wood--and I followed an ambulance waggon driving at a trot to three or four points on ridge and plain, gathering up the sick or wounded, and returning to hospital. The mass of Boers appeared to be lying under the shelter of Taba Nyama (or Intaba Mnyama--Black Mountain). It is a nine-mile range of hills running east and west, nearly parallel to the Tugela, and having Potgieter's Drift on its left. The left extremity, looking over the Drift, rises into double peaks, and is called Mabedhlane, or the Paps, by Zulus. The main Boer position appears to be halfway up these peaks and along the range to their right. To-day it is said that the relieving force intends to approach the mountain by parallels, sapping and mining as it goes, and treating the positions like a mediaeval fortress, or one of those ramparted and turreted cities which "Uncle Toby" used to besiege on the bowling green. One's only fear is about the delay. The population at Intombi is now approaching 4,000, nearly 3,000 being sick. I doubt if we could put 4,000 men in the field to-day. Men and horses crawl feebly about, shaken with every form of internal pain and weakness. Women suffer even more. The terror of the shells has caused thirty-two premature births since the siege began. It is true a heliogram to-day tells us there are seventy-four big waggons waiting at Frere for our relief--milk, vegetables, forage, eleven waggons of rum, fifty cases of whisky, 5,000 cigarettes, and so on. But all depends upon those parallels, so slowly advancing against Taba Nyama, and our insides are being sapped and mined far more quickly.