most determined manner. However,
we held on our way very composedly, our waggons rumbling along sleepily
indifferent, while the Boers with all their might would be hanging on to
our tail. Usually, after we had towed them for a day or two, they would
let go, and then another lot would come along and lay hold. The first
party would then retire to its own village and district, feeling, no
doubt, that it had barked us off the premises in great style, and lay in
wait for the next army of ten or twenty thousand men that should happen
to pass that way.

It is the convoy that always hampers our movements so, that dictates the
formation of an advance and makes us almost a passive target to attack.
Our convoy with Ian Hamilton must have been seven or eight miles long,
and was often delayed for hours at fords and creeks, where scenes of
wild confusion took place and you were deafened with yelling Kaffirs and
cracking whips. This convoy has of course to be guarded throughout,
which means a very attenuated and consequently weakened force, an attack
on one part of which might be carried on without the knowledge of the
rest of the column, or the possibility of its giving much help anyway.
When we left Lindley we had a sharp rearguard action, and the Boers
pushed their attack very vigorously. They did the same on the right
flank, and the advance guard also had some fighting. Neither of these
parties knew that the others were engaged at all, and probably the bulk
of the main column were quite ignorant that a shot had been fired
anywhere.

Lindley is one of those peculiar, bare, little Dutch towns, the presence
of which on the lonely hillside always seems so inexplicable. It is
even more than usually hideous. There is the inevitable big church, the
only large building in the place, occupying a central position, and
looking very frigid and uninviting, like the doctrine it inculcates; a
few large general stores, where you can buy anything from a plough to a
pennyworth of sweets, and some single-storey, tin-roofed houses or
cottages flung down in a loose group. But around it there are none of
the usual signs of a town neighbourhood. No visible roads lead to it; no
fertile and cultivated land surrounds it; no trees or parks or pleasure
grounds are near it. The houses might have been pitched down yesterday
for all the notice the veldt takes of them. Spread out over the hills
and valleys for some hundreds of miles each side this barren treel