The Natal Railway.

Manawatu Herald, 19 October 1899, Page 3

The Natal Railway.

♦ The railway tunnel at Laing's Nek it 2218 ft in It ngth, and the Natal terminu3 is at Charles town, on ihe Transvaal frontier, whence the Boers hive continuous communication by rail with Pretoria. "Boointk," in the Sydney I>aiiy Telegraph, gives the following description of the Natal railway: — 41 The tot«l length of. the line from Durban to Charlestown is 804 mile?, of which only 47 miles is perfectly level. All tha rest is a succession of dips and rises, and the gradients and curves are exceptionally severe. The curves must have as much as a 40ft radius, and the grade is in some places one in 20. At a distance of 68 miles from Durban the line reached a height of 8054 ft above the sea level, the falls 100 ft to Maritzburg, and within a few miles rises again to 8700fr, near Howick and the beautiful Uragini Fall?. An official report say.* : ' Somu idea of the undulations which characterise the line may be formed from the fact that each train starling from Durban has actually to be pulled the equivalent to a lift of two and a half milna vertical bpfore it reaches the terminus at Charlestown, 5386 ft above the level of the sea.' " Once Liing'a Nek is left behind (says another writei) tha frontier is soon reached at Charlestown, and on the Transvaal side, at Volksraad, strong Boer laagers, wilh poworfu! artillery, have been formed. The object of the Boer laagers is to defend their border, and to form their base, very, probably, for an attempted dash into Natal. All this district is splendidly adapted to the Brer tactics of fighting. Kopje follows kopje. The road is surrounded by steep hills, which would afford splendid cover to the Boer sharp-shooter, and this continues all

the way to faardekop. 1\) the north of this Transvaal town is a steep rang« of mountains, and to the south the Zandepruit, a rivulet* with but little water in the dry season, but a rnging torrent after heavy rains. This makes a very strong position, and, according to reports from Natal, the Boers intend to ftrongly fortify the whole road from Vulksrust to Paardtkop, the nest important station. If their old taciies be persisted in, every kopje on this road will have to be taken separately, and the arduous nature of such a task can easily be imagined At Utrecht and "Vryheid, to the east of Newcastle, the Boers have for some time been accumulating stores of every description, and, in all probability, it will become necessary for British troops to storm both places.