On the 3rd a sortie towards Bulwana Mountain was made by the besieged force, but the Boers were found to be too strong to be attacked. Already the enemy was developing an advance southwards into the heart of Natal; on the 2nd, Colenso, where lay a small British garrison of bluejackets and Dublin Fusiliers, was shelled, and the probability of the detachment being isolated and overwhelmed was so great, that it was, perhaps somewhat precipitately, withdrawn. The great railway bridge across the Tugela fell into the enemy's hands. Here, again, it would have been wise for the British troops to have broken up the bridges instead of leaving them for the enemy's use. It was certain that the Boers, when they should be at last driven back, would not be so obliging. [Illustration: GENERAL BULLER'S ARRIVAL AT CAPETOWN. General Buller arrived at Capetown on the 31st October, the day after the battle at Farquhar's Farm and the disaster at Nicholson's Nek. He received a most enthusiastic welcome. The photograph represents the scene in Adderley Street.] The situation in Natal was now unfortunate in the extreme. No British reinforcements were within reach. The main army in the Colony was beleaguered in Ladysmith; between the Boers and Durban were only the Colonial troops, at the outside not much over 2,500 strong, a few seamen landed from the British warships, and two regular battalions, the Dublin Fusiliers and the Borderers. A bold, decided advance, and the Boers might yet make good their boast of hoisting the four-coloured flag over Durban. [Sidenote: Condition of affairs on the Western Frontier.] [Sidenote: OCT. 1899.] _British Forces in Cape Colony._] Meantime on the western frontier of the Boer republics the enemy was hard at work. The British forces in this direction were altogether insignificant. At De Aar, an important railway junction on the line between Capetown and Kimberley, was a handful of British troops guarding a great accumulation of stores for the use of the Army Corps when it arrived. The camp was practically undefended, and was open to a daring attack, for the garrison was too weak to occupy the heights which commanded it. Hopetown, on the Orange River, to the north of De Aar, was occupied by a diminutive force. At Orange River station the great bridge over the Orange River was held by a detachment of bluejackets, and by a handful of infantry entrenched at either end. Beyond that point, which is over 580 miles by rail from Capetown, the line to Kimberley had to be left unguarded. In Kimberley was a detachment of the Loyal North Lancashire battalion, a battery of garrison artillery with some old 7-pounder muzzle-loaders, and a considerable number of volunteers raised and armed by the De Beers Company, which worked the diamond mines. The main difficulty was the provisioning of the place, for there were some 10,000 Kaffir workers in the mines, who were not permitted by the Boers to go to their homes.