ad no breeding cattle or horses, which
would not live in this veld, and only the ammunition and goods that I
had brought with me.

So it was clear that but one thing remained to be done, namely, to trek
back to what is now the Transvaal territory, or, better still, to Natal,
for this route would enable us to avoid the worst of the mountains.
There we might join some other party of the emigrant Boers--for choice,
that of Retief, of whose arrival over the Drakensberg I was able to tell
them.

That point settled, we made our preparations. To begin with, I had only
enough oxen for two wagons, whereas, even if we abandoned the rest
of them, we must take at least four. Therefore, through my Kaffirs, I
opened negotiations with the surrounding natives, who, when they heard
that I was not a Boer and was prepared to pay for what I bought, soon
expressed a willingness to trade. Indeed, very shortly we had quite a
market established, to which cattle were brought that I bargained for
and purchased, giving cloth, knives, hoes, and the usual Kaffir goods in
payment for the same.

Also, they brought mealies and other corn; and oh! the delight with
which those poor people, who for months and months had existed upon
nothing but flesh-meat, ate of this farinaceous food. Never shall I
forget seeing Marie and the surviving children partake of their first
meal of porridge, and washing the sticky stuff down with draughts of
fresh, sugared milk, for with the oxen I had succeeded in obtaining two
good cows. It is enough to say that this change of diet soon completely
re-established their health, and made Marie more beautiful than she had
ever been before.

Having got the oxen, the next thing was to break them to the yoke; for,
although docile creatures enough, they had never even seen a wagon.
This proved a long and difficult process, involving many trial trips;
moreover, the selected wagons, one of which had belonged to Pereira,
must be mended with very insufficient tools and without the help of a
forge. Indeed, had it not chanced that Hans, the Hottentot, had worked
for a wagon-maker at some indefinite period of his career, I do not
think that we could have managed the job at all.

It was while we were busy with these tasks that some news arrived which
was unpleasing enough to everyone, except perhaps to Henri Marais. I
was engaged on a certain evening in trying to make sixteen of the Kaffir
cattle pull together in the yoke, instead of