120 . THE GREAT THIKST LAND. 



and exhausts the victim. Each farmer I have spoken 

 to on the subject professed to have a cure for it, 

 hut, on comparing notes, every remedy was different. 

 That none of the Boers know any preventive of the 

 ravages of this disease is certain ; for, if so, why do they 

 not employ it? and the proof they do not is that 

 along the roads the traveller finds, or sees, hundreds 

 of skeletons that mark the place where victims to 

 red-water fell. In one part of the country, not far 

 from Harrismith, the road was as covered with the 

 hones of dead cattle, as was the road from Balac- 

 lava to the front, during the spring of 1855. The 

 reader may justly ask how I know the poor animals 

 died of red- water. My answer is simply, the drivers 

 who were with us said so. An experienced veterinary 

 surgeon, with a well-earned reputation, and a handsome 

 salary attached to his appointment, in a year or two, 

 if I mistake not, would soon solve the mystery, and 

 save Natal tens of thousands of pounds annually. 



At this camping-ground I first saw that beautiful 

 and extraordinary finch, with a tail so long that, in a 

 breeze of wind, it seems that the bird is carried by the 

 tail, instead of the reverse. Their plumage on the body 

 is a beautiful full-coloured orange and a glossy black. The 

 tail I found, in some specimens, to be upwards of two feet 

 long, and an inch and a half wide, and so pliant are the 

 feathers even down to the quill, that they flutter and 

 rustle in the wind like pieces of black silk. 



When it is blowing pretty strong their tails seem to 

 carry them away down wind, but I think in this action 

 the bird is either amusing himself or trying to deceive 

 the observer; for on several occasions, when I have 

 thought them struggling against the breeze unsuccess- 



