CHAPTER III.
THE FIRST WEEK'S WAR LADYSMITH, _Thursday, October 19, 1899_.
It is a week to-day since the Boers of the Transvaal and Free State began their combined invasion of Natal.

So far all action has been on their side.

They have crept down the passes with their waggons and half-organised bands of mounted infantry, and have now advanced within a short day's march of the two main British positions which protect the whole colony.

It will be seen on a map that North Natal forms a fairly regular isoceles triangle, having Charlestown, Majuba, and Laing's Nek at the apex, the Drakensberg range separating it from the Free State on the one side, and the Buffalo River with its lower hills separating it from the Transvaal on the other.

A base may be drawn a few miles below Ladysmith--say, from Oliver's Hoek Pass in the Drakensberg to the union of the Tugela River with the Buffalo.