250 Voyage of the Novara. 



mares, and foals), of the value of £525,000 sterling.* Many 

 landowners in consequence entirely gave up rearing horses, and 

 turned their attention almost exclusively to the breeding of 

 sheep. The visitations of this malady are hy no means of late 

 introduction, but hitherto they had made their appearance at 

 such long intervals, that but little attention was paid to them 

 and people regarded their return without much alarm. This 

 disease of the horse, usually endemic in Cape Colony, assumed 

 every twenty years, owing to some inexplicable causes, an 

 epidemic character, and on those occasions extended over an 

 extensive area, as happened with extraordinary regularity in 

 the years I78O, 1801, 1819, 1839, and 1854. Hitherto no 

 further precaution was taken, than, so soon as the disease 

 appeared, to drive the horses from the grass pastures to their 

 stables or covered sheds, and there supply them with fodder, 

 the night dew being considered a main cause of the complaint. 

 A resident in Stellenbosch, indeed, maintained that the dew 

 which was deposited during the continuance of the disease 

 tasted quite bitter, and was of an unusual brownish tinge. 

 Singular to say, not the slightest symptoms of illness 

 manifested themselves in the swine, dogs, and birds of prey 

 which devoured the carcases of horses that died of the disease, 



* At the same time 92,793 head of cattle (dranglit oxen, cows, and calves) fell a 

 sacrifice to a disease of the lungs, and we were assm'ed that the original cause of 

 tliis terribly fatal malady {Pleurojmeumonia) is attributable to a bull having been 

 imported from Holland, in the year 1854, in a diseased state. Tlie English public 

 will remember the severe panic under which Continental graziers, and others con- 

 nected with the cattle trade, laboured during tlie years 1854-55 and the commence- 

 ment of 1856. 



