it is also dangerous by
blowing out horses; and if they are allowed to drink much after eating
it, they sometimes die from the swelling of the corn inside them, or the
gas there generated.

About the coast of Natal, horses did not thrive well; the climate was
rather relaxing, and "the sickness," as it is called, sometimes attacked
them. The enormous number of ticks that transferred their adhesive
properties from the grass to the hides of the horses, and then sucked
the blood, was a species of outlay that few of the hard-worked
quadrupeds could afford. If a horse were turned out to graze in the
morning, he would before evening be covered with hundreds of ticks, each
of which, by burying itself under the horse's skin and sucking the
blood, becomes distended and increased from the size and appearance of a
common bug to that of a broad-bean. A Kaffir would be nearly an hour in
clearing a horse from these animals, and after all overlook scores,
whose distended hides would appear in the morning. The sickness that I
refer to was very fatal: a horse would one day appear well, but perhaps
a little heavy in hand; the next day he would be down on his side, and
dead before the evening. I attended the _post-mortem_ of one or two
animals that died in this way, but could discover nothing decidedly
unhealthy: this, however, was most probably owing to my want of
experience in the veterinary art. The Boers are frequently unmerciful
to their horses, and I seldom rode a horse that had been very long in
the possession of a Boer, but I found its mouth like iron and its temper
none of the sweetest. The Dutchmen frequently train their
shooting-horses to stand fire by galloping them for two or three miles
and then firing twenty or thirty shots from their backs. If these
horses are at all frisky under the discharge, the merciless riders,
plying whip and spur, take another gallop, and repeat the performance
until they conquer the restlessness of their steeds. This is certainly
not a proceeding likely to improve the temper of any animal,
particularly if well bred or having any fire in its composition; but
rough-and-ready is the great thing in Africa.

When well-trained, the Cape shooting-pony is worth his weight in gold;
he is treated more like a dog than a horse, knows when he is spoken to,
and obeys orders, fears nothing, and seems to delight in sport. I
possessed a pony that was so easily managed and steady, that I
frequently shot s