The British Corps, to the command of which Lord Methuen was assigned, assembled at the Orange River Bridge without opposition or difficulty, its concentration being effected {p.109} on the 19th of November.

The advance thence, in fact, began on the 21st, and on the 23rd was fought its first battle, that of Belmont.
It will be well here to summarize, map in hand, the character and result of the Boers' operations in this western theatre, during the priceless five weeks of opportunity secured to them by the over-confidence, or the remissness, or the forbearance, of their powerful enemy.

The conditions differed from those in the eastern scene of war--in Natal--because there the just anxiety of the inhabitants, reflected in that of the colonial and Imperial governments, had occasioned the concentration of by far the greatest mass of available British troops.
The exposure of Natal in its more vital and strictly British interests greatly exceeded that of Cape Colony, where, owing to the remoteness of the seaboard, near which the British chiefly congregated, the first of the Boer invasion would fall upon a population strongly sympathetic with the cause of the enemy, though British in allegiance.

Therefore while this disloyalty was ominous and detrimental {p.110} to the British cause as a whole, direct injury to British interests was less immediately threatened.

The Cape frontier, accordingly, was left defenceless, as has been shown; and in a strictly military point of view it was quite correct thus wholly to neglect one, rather than weakly to divide between two.
The consequence was that in Natal occurred during ten days the severe and nearly continuous fighting already narrated, with the result of shutting up in Ladysmith, on the direct line of any further advance contemplated by the Boers, a very strong British force; incapable, doubtless, of taking the field against the vastly superior numbers confronting it, but most capable, by numbers and position, of embarrassing any onward movement of the enemy.