positive fact that Nojoke used frequently to take his rest coiled up
like a boa constrictor in a box at the end of the waggon, in which box
stood three iron pots with their sharp legs sticking up. On those legs
he peacefully slumbered when the waggon was going over ground that
prohibited our even stopping in it. "Scowl" was not a nice boy to look
at, for his naked back was simply cut to pieces and covered with huge
weals, of which everybody, doubtless, thought we were the cause. On
inquiring how he came to get such a tremendous thrashing, it turned
out that these Basutus have a custom of sending young men of a certain
age[+] out in couples, each armed with a good "sjambok" (a whip cut from
the hide of a sea-cow), to thrash one another till one gives in, and
that it was in one of these encounters that the intelligent Scowl got
so lacerated; but, as he remarked with a grin, "_My_ back is nothing, the
chiefs should see that of the other boy."

[*] Of these two lads, Nojoke subsequently turned out
worthless, and went to the Diamond Fields, whilst Scowl
became an excellent servant, until he took to wearing a
black coat, and turned Christian, when he shortly afterwards
developed into a drunkard and a thief.

[+] The age of puberty.

We spent one night at Middelburg, and next morning, bidding adieu to our
kind English friends, started for Pretoria, taking care to end our first
day's journey at a house where an Englishman lived, so as to ensure a
clean shakedown. Here we discovered that the horse I was riding (the
sole survivor of the five we had started with) had got the sickness,
and so we had to leave him and hire another. This horse, by the by,
recovered, which is the only instance of an animal's conquering the
disease which has yet come under my observation. We hired the new horse
from a Boer, who charged us exactly three times its proper price,
and then preached us a sermon quite a quarter of an hour long on
his hospitality, his kindness of heart, and his willingness to help
strangers. I must tell you that, just as we were going to sleep the
night before, a stranger had come and asked for a shakedown, which was
given to him in the same room. We had risen before daybreak, and my
companion was expatiating to me, in clear and forcible language, on the
hypocrisy and scoundrelism of this Boer, when suddenly a sleepy voice
out of the darkness murmured thickly, "I say, stranger, guess you
shouldn