f distributing meat to the burghers. After it had been cut up, the
Vleeschkorporaal[2] handed out the pieces--a sufficiently responsible
task, as it proved, for, as the portions differed much in quality, it
became of the first importance that the Vleeschkorporaal should be a man
whose impartiality was above suspicion. To avoid any temptations to
favouritism, this useful personage used to turn his back on the
burghers, and as the men came up in turn he would pick up the piece of
meat which lay nearest to hand and, without looking round, give it to
the man who was waiting behind him to receive it.

This arrangement should have been satisfactory to all, but it sometimes
happened that some burgher, whom fortune had not favoured, made no
effort to conceal his discontent, and thus squabbles frequently
occurred. Then the Vleeschkorporaal, fully convinced of his own
uprightness, would let his tongue go, and the burgher who had complained
was a man to be pitied. But such quarrels only occurred early in the
campaign. By the time that the Vleeschkorporaal had been a few weeks at
his work he had gained a considerable knowledge of human nature, and the
injustice of his fellows no longer troubled him. Accordingly he allowed
the complaints of the men to go in at one ear and at once to come out at
the other. The burghers, too, soon became convinced of the foolishness
of their conduct, and learnt the lesson of content and forbearance.

As I have already stated, the burgher had to boil or roast his own meat.
The roasting was done on a spit cut in the shape of a fork, the wood
being obtained from a branch of the nearest tree. A more ambitious fork
was manufactured from fencing wire, and had sometimes even as many as
four prongs. A skillful man would so arrange the meat on his spit as to
have alternate pieces of fat and of lean, and thus get what we used to
call a _bout span_.[3]

The burghers utilized the flour supplied to them in making cakes; these
they cooked in boiling fat, and called them _stormjagers_[4] or
_maagbommen_.[5]

Later on, the British, finding that by looting our cattle they could get
fresh meat for nothing, were no longer forced to be content with
bully-beef. They then, like ourselves, killed oxen and sheep; but,
unlike us, were very wasteful with it. Often, in the camping places they
had vacated, we found the remains of half-eaten oxen, sheep, pigs, and
poultry.

But I shall not go further into this matter. I leav