orget them, all
the same, not in thirty-three years, or three hundred and thirty-three, if
he happens to have a memory of any kind at that period.

This mode of punishing recalcitrant persons was picked up, I am told, from
one of the savage tribes. I do not know if this is so or not, but there is
no doubt that the niggers know all about it, because one day, when I found
that one of my niggers had been helping himself lavishly to my tobacco, I
promised to stand him on an ant-heap as soon as I had finished shaving.
Five minutes later my other nigger, Lazarus, came into my tent and informed
me that Johnnie had bolted. I went out, and by the aid of my glasses I
could just espy a black dot away out on the veldt, making a rapid and
direct line for the land of the Basutos; and that was the last I ever saw
or heard of tobacco-loving, work-dodging, truth-twisting Johnnie.

There is a distinctly humorous side to the Boer character, which crops out
sometimes in his methods of dealing out justice to those who have done the
thing that seems evil in his sight. If there is a fellow in laager who is
not amenable to orders, one of those malcontents who desires to have
everything his own way--and there generally is one of these cherubs in
every large gathering of men all the world over--the commandant first calls
him up and warns him that he is making himself a pest to the whole
commando, and exhorts him to mend his manners. As a general thing the
commandant throws a few slabs of Scripture appropriate to the occasion at
the disturber's ears, and mixes it judiciously with a good deal of worldly
wisdom, all of which tending to teach the fellow that he is about as
desirable as a comrade as a sore eye in a sand-storm. Should the
exhortation not have the desired effect, and the offender continue to stir
up strife in laager, as a lame mule stirs up mud in midstream, then the
commandant sends a guard of young men to gather in the unruly one. He is
captured with as little ceremony as a nigger captures a hog in the midst of
his mealy patch. They strip him bare to the waist, and put a bridle on his
head; the bit is jammed into his mouth, and firmly buckled there, and then
the circus begins. One of the guards takes the reins, usually a couple of
long lengths of raw hide; another flicks the human steed on the bare ribs
with a sjambok, and he is ordered to show his paces. He has to walk, trot,
canter, gallop, and "tripple" all around the laager severa