FEEDING 167 



While on this topic I do not think it will be out of Horse 



_. sickness 



place to allude to the widespread theory regarding audits 

 horse sickness in South Africa, which is, that it arises causes 

 from eating moistened grass, and it is the rule out there 

 not to graze horses while the dew is on the ground. 

 This deadly disease is prevalent from the Cape up to 

 the Zambesi, and from being comparatively mild in the 

 southern parts increases in intensity the further north 

 you go, the basin of the Crocodile river, and the 

 region lying between it and the Zambesi, being by far 

 the deadliest. When I was at Macloutsie and Tuli in 

 1890-91,' the horses of the Bechuanaland Border Police 

 and of the British South Africa Company's Police 

 suffered very heavily, losing about ninety-seven per 

 cent, from this cursed malady, which in its destructive 

 deadliness always reminded me of that awful and 

 mysterious scourge which is so fatal to humanity in the 

 East, and which so far, like itself, has baffled and defied 

 science. 



I always took the greatest care of my horses, and 

 the greatest interest in watching each individual case, 

 and in doing all that it was possible to do for them. I 

 saw some hundreds die, sometimes at the rate of eleven 

 a week, and one conclusion I came to, rightly or 

 wrongly I will not presume to say, was that these 

 deaths had nothing to do with grazing in the early 

 morning, but that the infection was, like cholera, in the 

 air, and inhaled whether a horse was in the stable or 

 not. My orders on the subject were stringent, and 

 were, I know, strictly carried out, and the horses never 

 went out grazing until the sun had been up long 

 enough to evaporate the dew. Yet the mortality 



