1 1 6 TALES OF A NOMAD. 



Caffre women carry young children upon their backs. 

 The children hang round their necks and pass their 

 legs round on each side of their mother's body. 



There was a poor woman with a little thing of perhaps 

 two years of age upon her back. During the fight it 

 was impossible always to distinguish men from women ; 

 indeed, the Basutos, knowing our aversion to fire in the 

 direction of women, used sometimes to take advantage 

 of it by placing their women behind them. 



The child I mentioned was a pretty little thing with 

 large dark eyes like a mouse, and I was horrified to see 

 that it had received a bullet through the thigh, though, 

 fortunately, the bone was not broken. It did not seem 

 to feel much pain, for it stared carelessly round, and 

 from time to time would touch the dreadful wound with 

 its finger. But the tears of the poor mother were pain- 

 ful to behold. May I never see such another sight ! 

 Heaven forgive us for the violence we do each other ! 



Trooper W , a man difficult to manage on pay day 

 when there was a canteen within five miles, but a lion in 

 the field, with his horny fist rubbed away something 

 which appeared to have got into his eye, and, without 

 even using a single expletive, handed his water-bottle 

 containing aqua pura qualified with commissariat rum 

 to the poor woman, saying as he did so : " Here, take a 

 sup of this". 



It was meant kindly. Honest W , my heart went 



out to you ; and if I could have got access to the ad- 

 jutant's escritoire at that moment, numerous entries of 

 drunk and disorderly, resisting the guard, breaking 

 out of barracks, etc., etc., would have been erased from a 

 certain defaulter's sheet. 



I went about a hundred yards away from the main 



