General Buller's orders on the 23rd were brief. Push for Ladysmith to-day, horse, foot, and artillery; both cavalry brigades to cross the river at once. The advance, which had hitherto been slow, was now hurried on. At midday it was in full swing, the cavalry having crossed the Tugela and massed at Fort Wylie. Meanwhile the Boers had taken up a formidable position on the right--on the well-entrenched height called by the gunners Three Knoll Hill, to describe the three hills, Terrace, Railway, and Pieters, that formed the entire position--while on the left they plied their activities from Grobler's Kloof. The artillery in front of Railway Hill concentrated a brisk fire upon the Boers therein entrenched, who returned some animated replies, assisted by other Dutchmen from a hidden vantage-point on the north-east of that eminence. General Hart's Brigade, to whose valiant Irishmen the difficult task of capturing the position was entrusted, was ordered to advance. This advance from Onderbrook Spruit to the base of Terrace Hill, the companion of Railway Hill, was a feat of cool courage that has seldom been equalled. The hill, triangular and standing some three hundred feet above the Tugela, was approached by a wide open space, which was commanded by the Boers, whose complicated position on Railway Hill and its component ridges gave them every advantage. The correspondent of the _Standard_ furnished a description of these precipitous steeps. "Railway Hill rises from the Tugela a mile from Platelayers' House. It is, perhaps, best described as triangular in shape, with one angle pointing towards the river. It rises from the latter in a series of jagged, boulder-strewn kopjes, until three hundred feet or so above the Tugela. A kloof, through which the railway passes upwards on its way to Pieters Station, separates the last jagged ledge from the hill proper. From the last kopje or ledge, and immediately on the other side of the line, the main part of the hill rises abruptly, almost precipitously, with a sharp edge running back in a north-westerly direction for several hundred yards. The base of this north-westerly line of hill makes up a kloof thick with thorn trees, and this kloof recedes round the left end of the hill to the rear, where the enemy's force, under Commandant Dupreez, had its quarters, while a little farther to the rear is still another kloof, in which the enemy's Creusots were mounted. Along the beginning of the sharp edge referred to a long trench was cut out, and right ahead, as the hill ran still upwards on an incline for three hundred yards or so, were other trenches, until the hill terminated in a crest crowded with commanding fortifications." To assail this formidable stronghold the troops moved off in the following order--the Inniskilling Fusiliers leading, followed by the Connaught Rangers, the Dublin Fusiliers, and the Imperial Light Infantry. Steadily marched the kharki-clad throng,