TAPPING THE ADMIRAL. 61 



After breakfast we continued our march, when I was 

 again tempted to saddle up and give chase to a troop 

 of springboks, one of which I shot : we continued our 

 march until sundown, when we halted beside a pool of 

 rain water. Here we found some young Boers and 

 Hottentots, belonging to a neighboring farm, actively 

 employed in digging out a nest of wild bees ; several 

 of them had their eyes nearly closed from the stings 

 which they had received. The spoils of the " bike," 

 however, repaid th*eir pains by twenty pounds of honey. 

 On approaching the nest, a large cluster of bees chose 

 my sunburned arm as a place of rendezvous, from which 

 I could not remove them until I had obtained a bunch 

 of burning grass. 



in every twenty Hottentots being drunkards, and they have, moreover, 

 not the slightest scruple of conscience as to who is the lawful proprie- 

 tor of the liquor, so long as they can get access to it. No locks nor 

 bolts avail ; and thus on the Bay-road, the high road between Algoa 

 Bay and Grahamstown, a constant system of tapping the admiral is 

 maintained. In this pursuit, these worthies, from long practice, have 

 anived at considerable skill, and it is usually accomplished in the fol- 

 lowing manner: If the liquor is in a cask, having removed one of the 

 hoops, a gimlet is inserted, when a bucket or two of spirit having been 

 drawn off, the aperture is filled with a plug, and, the hoop being re- 

 placed, no outward mark is visible. The liquor thus stolen, if missed, 

 and inquiries issued, is very plausibly set down to the score of leakage. 

 A great deal of gin arrives in Grahamstown in square case-botlles, pack- 

 ed in slight red vyooden cases. To these the Hottentots devote marked 

 attention, owing to the greater facility of getting at them. Having 

 carefully removed the lid and drained several of the bottles, either by 

 drinking them or pouring their contents into the water-casks belong- 

 ing to the wagons, they eitlier replace the liquor with water and re- 

 pack the case again as they found it, or else they break the bottles 

 which they have drained and replace them in the case, at the eamo 

 time taking out a quantity of the chaff in which they have been pack- 

 ed. This is done to delude the merchant into the idea that the loss of 

 liquor occuiTed owing to breakage from original bad packing. Tlia 

 risk and damage entailed on the proprietors of wagons and ovs-ners of 

 merchandise from the drivers indulging in such a system, on tlie pr& 

 • carious roads of the colony, may bo imagined. 



