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Updated: May 14, 2025
They included the worst drifts of the whole journey, and getting up and down them in pitch-dark was unpleasant work and a pretty severe test of driving. Three mule-waggons of the convoy had to be abandoned at one place, but the rest of it reached Lindley safely, as did we. It was rather like making a port after a storm when the lights appeared and a bugle blowing "first post" was heard.
It was rarely the case that the Boers attempted to trek for any considerable distance with their heavy waggons when they were aware of the presence of the enemy in the vicinity. Ox-waggons were always left behind, while only a small number of mule-waggons, bearing provisions and ammunition, were taken, and on that account they were able to move with greater rapidity than their opponents.
An Officer of the Government, with a great outfit of mule-waggons loaded with balloons, kites, dynamite bombs, and electrical apparatus, halted in the midst of a desert, where there had been no rain for ten years, and set up a camp.
We were two thousand horsemen, and our vehicles, carts, ox-and mule-waggons formed a procession fully six miles long. When we trekked out of the nek strict orders were given that there was to be no loud talking and no matches struck. This latter was especially hard on such a crowd of inveterate smokers.
I found myself with the Irish Fusiliers at Range Post, where the road crosses to the foot of Waggon Hill. The stream of ambulance was incessant covered mule-waggons, little ox-carts, green dhoolies carried by indomitable Hindoos, knee-deep in water, and indifferent to every kind of death.
Before dinner I had invested nearly all my disposable funds in printed calicoes, long knives, and looking-glasses, leaving just money enough to purchase mule-waggons and hire teamsters at Independence, our point of departure for the plains. A few days after, with my new companions, I was steaming up the Missouri, on our way to the trackless prairies of the "Far West."
An interminable procession of ox and mule-waggons files down the pass; it is a much larger convoy than I thought, and must have received additions since we started. At this rate we shall be ages getting to Lindley. One no longer wonders at the slowness of an army's movement out here.
'Halt, 'Unhook! The wheelers are rapidly unhooked, the team trots back again to the rear. Presently two more are called up with more ammunition. The empty waggons are refilled from the mule-waggons, which follow the battery with the reserve shells, and their black crews and all.
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