‘_January 21st._--Severe fighting going on. The English have got on to the ridge, and have put up schanzes all along it, and at some points are only eight hundred to nine hundred yards from our trenches. Our men are beginning to get very jumpy and nervous, as their trenches are lying mostly in open rolling country, and, according to many of the Burghers, could be rushed. There has been continuous rifle fire from the various schanzes and trenches all day. Two Ermelo men have been killed and five wounded. Total Boer casualties up there, so far, are sixty. The English artillery is magnificent, so much so that our guns can only be worked at intervals. ‘_January 22nd._--All eyes are now directed to the Upper Tugela, and there is no doubt affairs there are becoming critical. The strain of the continuous fighting is beginning to tell on the Burghers, more especially as there are every day more or less casualties in the trenches. The Burghers get into the trenches before daylight, and then have to remain in them till they are relieved the next morning before daybreak. The country is too open and exposed for them to leave the trenches, unless it is dark. Moreover, they are expecting a rush some morning early, or a night attack. ‘_January 23rd._--Excitement everywhere is intense, and if things continue like this for a few days longer, the Boers will break and run. Things are hanging in the balance, and the officers and burghers are looking more anxious now than when retreating through Weenen. The English have only to win through our trenches to the Ladysmith-Van Reenen road, i.e. about one mile of open rolling country, and then Ladysmith is practically relieved. ‘Owing to the Boer trenches not being “cast-iron” positions, and chiefly because they have no good back door to them, the Boers do not like them, and I verily believe the English are going to break through at last. The wear and tear and strain of the last two days’ fighting is telling very much on the burghers.’ Here we have evidence that Sir Charles Warren’s plan of advancing step by step after periods of continuous bombardment was demoralising the Boers, and that another day or two of such bombardment would have enabled the British to rush the Boer trenches with success. A writer of a paper entitled ‘Pages from the Diary of a Boer Officer,’ by another of them, contributed to the ‘United Service Magazine’ of February 1902, says, in reference to the importance of Spion Kop: ‘The centre and key of the line of defence was Spion Kop, a flat-topped hill, which through its height dominated all the federal positions.... Besides being the central position this hill was the key of the federal line of defence and thus most important--the taking and the holding of Spion Kop by the English meaning the defeat of the Republicans and the relief of Ladysmith.’