was that Tuesday, Majuba Day--although on that date the tide of fortune had turned in our favour--marked the lowest pitch of despondency into which the garrison was ever plunged during the 118 days of its investment."[40] [Footnote 40: London _Weekly Times_, March 30, 1900.] The {p.300} end of their sufferings, however, was really at hand. Buller's telegram of February 28 announcing the success of the next operation, states also its character. "Finding that the passage of Langewachte Spruit (the scene of the fighting on the 23rd and 24th) was commanded by strong entrenchments, I reconnoitred for another passage of the Tugela. One was found for me below the cataract by Colonel Sandbach, Royal Engineers.... On the 26th, finding that I could make a practicable approach, I crossed the guns and baggage back to the south side of the Tugela, took up the pontoon bridge on the night of the 26th, and relaid it at the new site.... On the 27th General Barton, with two battalions 6th Brigade and the Royal Dublin Fusiliers, crept about one and a half miles down the banks of the river, and, ascending an almost precipitous cliff of about 500 feet, assaulted and carried the top of Pieter's Hill. This hill to a certain extent turned the enemy's left, and the 4th Brigade, under Colonel Norcott, and the 11th Brigade, under Colonel Kitchener, the whole under General Warren, assailed the enemy's main position, which was magnificently {p.301} carried by the South Lancashire Regiment about sunset." This handsome operation, which finally loosed the bonds in which Ladysmith was held, should perhaps be described in more detail than a telegram commonly admits. At the lower end of the northerly stretch of the Tugela, below Colenso, where the river again turns east, the railroad, which has kept close to the west bank, also inclines east for a mile and a half, constrained still to cling to the stream by hills to the northward. The more conspicuous of these had been named Terrace Hill and Railway Hill, and there it was that the British attacks of the 24th had been baffled. After passing them the road leaves the river, runs north, and in another mile reaches Pieter's Station. A mile to the eastward of this is Pieter's Hill, which the river nears by a northerly bend in its course. The Boer position north of this section of the river stretched from Railway Hill, three-quarters of a mile west of the road, to Pieter's Hill. The British occupied the heights on the opposite side, between one and two miles distant, and 200 feet above the {p.302} bed of the Tugela. Along these crests they mounted heavy guns, a sustained fire from which, as is usual, preceded the attack.