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 treeless veldt, which, after all, is the main fact of South African life, seems to carry these little unexpected towns on its breast with the same ease and unconsciousness that the sea carries its fleets of ships; surrounding and lapping at their very hulls; not changed itself nor influenced by their presence.

During our stay of a day or two at Lindley it became increasingly evident that the people of that neighbourhood resented our presence there.  Our pickets were constantly engaged.  There are some rather abrupt hills on the east side of the town, among the nearer ones of which our look-outs were stationed while the Boers prowled among the others.  Here the Mausers and Lee-Metfords talked incessantly, and the conversation was carried on in a desultory way down in the river valley and among the rolling hills on the southern side.  It was plain that the enemy was quite prepared to “put up a show” for us, and no one was surprised, when the morning of our departure came, to see the strong force of Mounted Infantry told off for rearguard, or note the presence of the General himself in that part of the field.