Buller's turning movement had now driven the Boers into the mountainous country between Colenso and Ladysmith, west of the bend in the Tugela. Here, when his campaign opened in December, had been the strength of their position. Its general character has been already mentioned, as well as some particular features--Grobler's Kloof, two miles above Colenso, the kopjes behind Fort Wylie commanding the bridge, etc. Between Grobler's and the northerly stretch of the river ran the railroad to Ladysmith, threading a maze of hills which a stay of three months had made intimately familiar to the Boers, both men and officers. The accidents of the ground, and their mutual influence from the military point of view, had been carefully studied and artificially improved, by men whose natural aptitudes for defensive warfare and choice of positions is of the highest. In nothing do they seem to have shown more skill than in the preparation of traps, {p.296} whereby success, won with just sufficient difficulty to seem plausibly brilliant, turns at the very moment of apparent victory into hopeless disaster, entailing either destruction or retreat. Into this tangle of obstacles the British forces were now about to enter. Colenso, found to be evacuated on February 19, was occupied on the 20th. A reconnaissance pushed across the bridge showed that the kopjes about Fort Wylie, now rendered untenable by the loss of Hlangwane, were but weakly held and their guns gone. On the morning of February 21, the second day after the occupation of Hlangwane, a pontoon bridge was thrown at a point between that hill and Colenso. By midday of the 22nd nearly five brigades of infantry had crossed, and immediately afterwards the advance began. That day and the two following were marked by extremely severe fighting, attended with alternate success and repulse, but the end was failure after very heavy losses. The series of incidents is instructive as a military lesson on warfare in an intricate mountain region; but to follow it would require care and {p.297} attention, with elaborate maps, and even so would possess sustained interest only for the professional reader.