of sixes or eights — bays, chestnuts, dapple greys and blacks — one 

 could not make a choice. A week or two before the occasion the 

 team gets its quarterly grooming and extra feeding to be quite fit 

 for the thirty or forty mile trip. The home-coming is generally 

 in great style — the pace is rapid and the representatives of the sev- 

 eral studs are thoroughly put to the test ; the speed increases with 

 the milage covered and it is very seldom if ever that a team appears 

 not as fresh after the journey of thirty miles as when they started 

 over bad roads with a rest of only an hour on the way. 



On a long journey frequent stoppages are made in order to 

 breathe the horses but more particularly to allow the regular pas 

 sage of urine, for if this precaution is overlooked a trouble known 

 in South Africa as "through the water" may occur. This is oc- 

 casioned by the swelling of the bladder and the paralj^xing of the 

 sphincter muscles, thus unabling the horse to pass its urine.* 



This method of travelling has been gone into with some detail, 

 for it certainly has been a great factor in the breeding of sound and 

 beautiful animals possessing great stamina and endurance and is 

 largely responsible for the large number of good horses in the inde- 

 pendent states when the colony horses have deteriorated. 



In those good old days and to a large extent to-day it was an 

 unwritten code of honor that the team (specially called the "Nacht- 

 maal span" — Communion team) should be perfet animals and that 

 it was a disgrace to possess a team of "flauwkoppe" (weak hearts) . 

 It was thus the desire of every farmer to breed from the best stal- 

 lion only and to give some attention to the selection of his brood 

 mares. 



"With the increase of better means of conveyance and the ap- 

 pearance of good roads toward the middle of the 19th Century the 

 wagon and team have largely been superceded by the "spider" 

 and pair or four in hand. It is a light four-wheeler very much in 

 use in the mountainous regions of Natal, eastern Transvaal and 

 parts of the Orange Free State and the Cape Colony ; but the Cape 

 cart in its various forms is the ideal and most popular vehicle in 

 the land. In the cities the vehicles present a motley collection from 

 every part of the world — from the light Rickshaw of Diirban, 

 drawn by a giant Zulu boy in the queerest haberdashery to the 

 London Hansom and the Arab or Malay driver who is as great a 



(8) Cf. Natal Agricultural Journal Vol. IV- 



65 



