CHAPTER XIII.

The Boer position.

Nov. 23rd/99.

BELMONT.*

Lord Methuen’s dispositions for attack were necessarily determined by the ground which the Boers had taken up to oppose his advance. Some two miles to the south-east of Belmont station a hill, in form like a sugar-loaf, rises abruptly about 280 feet above the veld. From it extends northwards a broken line of kopjes which for several miles runs parallel with the railway in its course from Orange River station to Kimberley. Twelve hundred yards to the north of the “ Sugar Loaf ” there is a precipitous hill of nearly equal height, which acquired the name of the “ Razor Back.” The northern side of it overhangs a steep ravine, some 600 yards wide. The most important feature of the range, termed “ Mont Blanc ” by Lord Methuen, stretches northward from beyond this ravine for three miles. It is irregular in outline and broadens on its northern face to a width of a mile. Its average height may be taken at 300 feet above the plain. To the south and west its slopes are very steep ; on the east they present fewer difficulties ; on the north they are comparatively easy. Between Mont Blanc and the railway is a secondary line of heights about a mile and a half long, of an average width of 1,200 yards. The northern portion of this western range is a steep-sided, flat-topped hill, called “ Table Mountain ” in the orders for the battle ; it lies about a mile due west of the central portion of Mont Blanc. Its average height is perhaps

* See maps Nos. io and io (a).