escape the feet-washing
ceremony (all in the same water) which this "simple pastoral people"
are said to indulge in, and which they might expect the "uitlander"
(stranger) to enter into with enthusiasm. When we came back, we
found that the women--who, by-the-by, do not eat till the men have
finished--had done their meal, and gone to bed, having first made us up
a luxurious couch on the floor, consisting of a filthy feather-bed, and
an equally filthy blanket. My heart misgave me when I looked at that
bed. It may have been fancy, but once or twice I thought it moved.
However, there was no choice, unless we chose to sit up all night; so in
we got, looking for all the world like three big sun-burned dolls put
to bed by some little girl. I, as the youngest, blew out the light, and
then!--from every side _they_ came. Up one's arms, up one's legs,
down one's back they scampered, till life became a burden. Sleep was
impossible; one could only lie awake and calculate the bites per minute,
and the quantity of blood one would lose before daybreak. Cold as it
was, I would have turned out and slept in the veldt, only my rug was
over my two companions as well as myself, so I could not take it. I have
slept in a good many different places, and in very fairly uncomfortable
places, but I never had such a night before.

At the first grey dawn of morning the old "frau" came stumbling out of
the bedroom, and sat down without ceremony in her big chair. Waiting
till she thought that we had reached a sufficiently advanced stage in
our toilette--and her idea of what that was must have been a strange
one--she shouted out to her daughters that they could "com," and in they
all came. Very glad were we when we had paid our bill, which was a heavy
one, and were in the saddle once more, riding through the cold morning
mist that lay in masses on all the ridges of the hills like snow on
mountains.

It was needful to start early, for we had more than sixty miles to
cover, and our ponies had done a good journey the day before. The work
that one can get out of these ponies is marvellous. There was my pony,
"Mettle," who had my eleven stone to carry, to say nothing of the
saddle, heavy saddle-bags, and a roll of rugs, who came in at the end
of his journey as fresh as paint. We cantered easily over the great
high-veldt prairies, now and then passing clumps of trees, outposts
of the bush-veldt. These enormous plains, notwithstanding their dreary
vastness,