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.

Next came the question of provisioning and medicines, one which
required the most careful consideration, for what we had to do was to
avoid lumbering the wagon, and yet to take everything absolutely
necessary. Fortunately, it turned out that Good is a bit of a doctor,
having at some point in his previous career managed to pass through a
course of medical and surgical instruction, which he has more or less
kept up. He is not, of course, qualified, but he knows more about it
than many a man who can write M.D. after his name, as we found out
afterwards, and he had a splendid travelling medicine chest and a set
of instruments. Whilst we were at Durban he cut off a Kafir's big toe
in a way which it was a pleasure to see. But he was quite nonplussed
when the Kafir, who had sat stolidly watching the operation, asked him
to put on another, saying that a "white one" would do at a pinch.

There remained, when these questions were satisfactorily settled, two
further important points for consideration, namely, that of arms and
that of servants. As to the arms I cannot do better than put down a
list of those which we finally decided on from among the ample store
that Sir Henry had brought with him from England, and those which I
owned. I copy it from my pocket-book, where I made the entry at the
time.

"Three heavy breech-loading double-eight elephant guns, weighing about
fifteen pounds each, to carry a charge of eleven drachms of black
powder