Mr. Winston Spencer Churchill, in his ‘London to Ladysmith via Pretoria,’ thus describes the position in front of Sir Redvers Buller and Sir Charles Warren:-- ‘When Buller had arrived at Potgieter’s he found himself confronted by a horseshoe position of great strength, enclosing and closing the debouches from the ford where he had secured a practical bridgehead. He therefore masked Potgieter’s with seven battalions and twenty-four guns, and sent Warren with twelve battalions and thirty-six guns to turn the right, which rested on the lofty hill--almost mountain--of Spion Kop. The Boers, to meet this turning movement, extended their line westwards along the heights of the Tugela valley almost as far as Acton Homes. Their whole position was therefore shaped like a note of interrogation laid on its side, --◠, the curve in front of General Lyttelton, the straight line before Sir Charles Warren. At the angle formed by the junction of the curve and the line stands Spion Kop--“Look-out Hill.” The straight position in front of Sir Charles Warren ran in two lines along the edge and crest of a plateau which rises steeply two miles from the river, but is approachable by numerous long arêtes and dongas.’ Let us now consider what were the operations Sir Redvers Buller proposed to execute. The instructions[4] he issued to Sir Charles Warren are necessarily the official record of what was in his mind at the time. But they are vague where they should be definite, and definite where they should be elastic. They tell Sir Charles Warren that, finding the Boers in front of Potgieter’s too strongly posted to allow of a direct attack upon their positions, his chief has decided to send him with the larger part of the army to turn their flank by crossing the Tugela near Trichard’s Drift and ‘moving up to the west of Spion Kop.’ But what the west of Spion Kop meant, whether the road by Acton Homes, or that by Fair View and Groote Hoek or Rosalie, the former twice as long as the latter, is not explained and it is impossible to gather from these instructions. Lord Roberts, in his despatch, though evidently in some perplexity, seems to think it meant the Acton Homes road. Next Sir Charles Warren was instructed to act as circumstances require, but he was to continue to refuse his right and throw his left forward till he gained the open plain north of Spion Kop, where he was told he would command the rear of the position facing Potgieter’s Drift, which he would be able to render untenable. While Sir Charles Warren was so employed, Sir Redvers Buller undertook to threaten both of the positions in front of Potgieter’s and also to attempt a crossing at Skiet’s Drift, so as to hold the enemy off Sir Charles Warren as much as possible.