The hill pitched precipitously down, with an occasional shelf or terrace, 700 feet into the Tugela below. The river ran, a brown streak of muddy water, flecked with foam, betwixt high rocky banks, through a valley of enchanting beauty. It curved and doubled back upon itself in the most sinuous fashion; from under Spearman's Hill two tongues of land projected northward fenced in by the two inverted ⋃'s which the stream hereabouts described. Between these two tongues and on the north of the river an undulating plain rose gently to the mountains, which ran parallel to the river course and shut it in. Exit from this plain there was none without scaling the mountains; on three sides, south, east, and west, was the river, on the fourth the mountain ridge. Thus there was no means of outflanking the enemy when once the army had crossed the river. A frontal assault would be inevitable; and already the Boers could be seen in small parties on the crest of the mountain line, building schanzes, digging trenches, and improvising defences. [Sidenote: [JAN. 11, 1900.] [Sidenote: The pont intact.] In the panorama the most striking object was the great mountain known as Spion Kop or Taba Myama--though the latter name is applied rather to the western part of the crest and slope, and Spion Kop to the eastern summit. It dominated the whole region, rising away to the north-west of Spearman's Hill, at a point where the chain of hills tends upwards to the north-west to meet the Drakensberg. It was flat-topped and grassy on the summit; then it fell away in sheer cliff, but with a narrow and steep incline at one point to the south, where it could just be scaled; then again its lower slopes descended in gentle undulations to the Tugela. On the northern side, so far as could be ascertained, its slope was gentle. So incorrect were the British maps that it was placed many miles out of its position, far away to the west, and this though it was a mountain famous in history as the point from which the Boer leaders gazed upon Natal and "saw the land that it was good." And beyond it rose the dim outlines, blue with the morning haze, of the troubled sea of mountains which fills Northern Natal; on the horizon the Biggarsberg; then the hills near Elandslaagte, Bulwana and the crests held by the British garrison at Ladysmith; then again to the left the craggy fortresses of the Drakensberg, with waterfalls pouring down their precipitous walls, and melancholy corries and patches of green upland pasture breaking their sombre tints of purple and grey. It was an enchanting vision that unfolded itself--Nature in her grandest and sublimest aspect. Just under Spearman's Hill lay the spidery line of the ferry; the pont itself was at the opposite side of the river, but the rope was intact. [Illustration: A PONT OR FERRY ON THE TUGELA.] [Illustration: _[Photo by Lambert Weston._ LIEUTENANT T. H. CARLISLE, S.A.L.H.