Note 149 — Chapter XIV · RORKE’S DRIFT—HELPMAKAAR—COURT OF INQUIRY, ETC.

Yet Sir B. Frere, on the 30th June, writes: “The position of Wood’s and Pearson’s columns effectually checked the execution of an attempt at invasion.” These two columns, being some ninety miles apart and secure in their own positions only, would have been of little avail had the Zulu king desired to make “an attempt at invasion.” It needed no better strategists than Cetshwayo and his chiefs to have masked each of the posts at Kambula and Etshowe with some 5000 men, and then “the Zulus might march at will through the country.”