had to carry with us. In this after part were a hide "cartle," or bed,
on which two people could sleep, also racks for rifles, and many other
little conveniences. I gave L125 for it, and think that it was cheap
at the price.

Then I bought a beautiful team of twenty Zulu oxen, which I had kept
my eye on for a year or two. Sixteen oxen is the usual number for a
team, but I took four extra to allow for casualties. These Zulu cattle
are small and light, not more than half the size of the Africander
oxen, which are generally used for transport purposes; but they will
live where the Africanders would starve, and with a moderate load can
make five miles a day better going, being quicker and not so liable to
become footsore. What is more, this lot were thoroughly "salted," that
is, they had worked all over South Africa, and so had become proof,
comparatively speaking, against red water, which so frequently
destroys whole teams of oxen when they get on to strange "veldt" or
grass country. As for "lung sick," which is a dreadful form of
pneumonia, very prevalent in this country, they had all been
inoculated against it. This is done by cutting a slit in the tail of
an ox, and binding in a piece of the diseased lung of an animal which
has died of the sickness. The result is that the ox sickens, takes the
disease in a mild form, which causes its tail to drop off, as a rule
about a foot from the root, and becomes proof against future attacks.
It seems cruel to rob the animal of his tail, especially in a country
where there are so many flies, but it is better to sacrifice the tail
and keep the ox than to lose both tail and ox, for a tail without an
ox is not much good, except to dust with. Still it does look odd to
trek along behind twenty stumps, where there ought to be tails. It
seems as though Nature made a trifling mistake, and stuck the stern
ornaments of a lot of prize bull-dogs on to the rumps of the oxen.