After the Modder fight Lord Methuen remained at the position then won, establishing a pontoon bridge, restoring that of the railroad, and awaiting reinforcements to replace the men lost in battle and those necessarily detached to protect his lengthening line of communications. After three severe actions he had now traversed forty-five of the seventy miles that lay between the Orange River and Kimberley; but the inadequacy of his numbers was increasingly felt. During the ten or twelve days at the Modder a serious demonstration was made in his rear at Enslin, threatening {p.162} the railroad and his communications. Although successfully repelled, it was evident that the enemy's concentration had made them so far superior as not only to increase greatly his task in front, but also to threaten his rear. "The longer I remained inactive," said he, in his report, "the stronger would the enemy become. Therefore, on the day my last reinforcement arrived, I decided to continue my advance. It was out of the question to follow the railway, owing to the large kopjes on either side, which had been strongly entrenched. Besides, by that route there was not sufficient water." The railroad, after crossing the Modder, runs on the west side of the river nearly due north for two miles, and then turns north-west for two more, when it passes between two kopjes, both fortified. The right-hand one of these, the Magersfontein, extends to the south-east for three miles, rising there to an abrupt peak about 150 feet high, which is the key of the situation. In the prolongation of this range a low ridge covered with brush extends eastward to the Modder, the bed of which thereabout follows for some distance {p.163} a north-east and south-west line. At the foot of the peak, but some little distance in advance, the Boers had dug a line of trenches, which not only covered the immediate front, but at the eastern end of Magersfontein sweep round the curve of the hill to the north for some hundred yards, and then turned east again, following the bushy ridge to the river. These dispositions facilitated the passage of troops from one flank to the other under cover, and preserved control of a ford over the Modder behind the line. The trenches, especially before the peak, were filled with riflemen. The kopje itself was also manned, but it is allowable to believe that the experience of the war, already illustrated by many encounters, must have persuaded so shrewd a fighter as Cronje of the superior advantage of the trench system. Before the trenches ran a continuous line of barbed-wire fence. A probable estimate of the opposing forces places the Boers at 15,000, the British at 11,000. No certainty can as yet be predicated for the Boer numbers, which depend upon the enemy's calculations, but that they were decisively superior is scarcely doubtful.