_[From an instantaneous photograph by the Biograph Co._ LORD DUNDONALD'S CAVALRY ON THE WAY TO POTGIETER'S DRIFT.] [Sidenote: [JAN. 11, 1900.] All the 10th and 11th the troops were on the march, streaming westwards in an unending column. On the 11th the cavalry under Lord Dundonald pushed forward, in advance of the army, to seize Springfield bridge--a long, wooden structure which spans the Little Tugela, and which, according to spies' accounts, had been left standing by the Boers. The country through which the troopers rode was pleasant upland, recalling to many the Yorkshire moors or the fells of Cumberland, only that far away, to north and west, rose in a fantastic wonderland of rugged heights the summits of the Drakensberg. Valleys with verdant herbage ran up into the mountains and were lost in the browns and purples of the savage rocks. It was a scene of beauty in the soft glow of the afternoon sun, with the white mists of night already rising from the valley bottoms--a delectable country, but void and untenanted by man. The sparse farms were empty; the war had driven away their owners--some to the British Army to avoid being commandeered and insulted by the invader, others to the Boer forces in guilty alarm at the approach of the "rooineks." And, strangest of all, there was no trace of the enemy. His scouts and pickets were nowhere seen; as the troopers moved cautiously and inquiringly over the broken terrain, no volleys flashed out from the folds of the spruits. Would it be so when Springfield bridge was reached, or must a battle be fought before the British could win possession of the Little Tugela? [Illustration: _[Photo by Middlebrook._ THE FIRST STEEP BIT ON ZWART KOP. Up which guns and ammunition had to be dragged by hand labour. Zwart Kop looks down on Potgieter's Drift from the east, as Spearman's Hill does from the south-west.] [Sidenote: Dundonald seizes Potgieter's Drift.]