THE "SICKNESS. 



suffer in condition ; the Indian corn is fattening, but is 

 very inferior to oats ; it is also dangerous by blowing out 

 horses ; and if they are allowed to drink much after eating 

 it, they sometimes die from the swelling of the corn inside 

 them, or the gas there generated. 



About the coast of Natal, horses did not thrive well ; 

 the climate was rather relaxing, and "the sickness/' as 

 it is called, sometimes attacked them. The enormous 

 number of ticks that transferred their adhesive properties 

 from the grass to the hides of the horses, and then sucked 

 the blood, was a species of outlay that few of the hard- 

 worked quadrupeds could afford. If a horse were turned 

 out to graze in the morning, he would before evening be 

 covered with hundreds of ticks, each of which, by burying 

 itself under the horse's skin and sucking the blood, becomes 

 distended and increased from the size and appearance of 

 a common bug to that of a broad-bean. A Kaffir would 

 be nearly an hour in clearing a horse from these animals, 

 and after all overlook scores, whose distended hides 

 would appear in the morning. The sickness that I refer 

 to was very fatal : a horse would one clay appear well, 

 but perhaps a little heavy in hand ; the next day he would 

 be down on his side, and dead before the evening. I 

 attended the post-mortem of one or two animals that 

 died in this way, but could discover nothing decidedly 

 unhealthy : this, however, was most probably owing to my 

 want of experience in the veterinary art. The Boers are 

 frequently unmerciful to their horses, and I seldom rode 

 a horse that had been very long in the possession of a 

 Boer, but I found its mouth like iron and its temper 



