A Breath from the Veldt 



^55 



the usual Dutch fashion ; but it did not matter much, as I had two other good 

 head and neck skins. 



For the next ten days Van Staden was seriously ill. On the third day, 

 indeed, 1 thought it was all up with him, but as luck would have it, the old 

 man had been a teetotaler all his days, and now whisky served him in good 

 stead. But for this I honestly believe he would never have pulled through. 

 Any one who knows what a bad attack of dysentery means — how completely it 

 saps all the vital forces — will know how difficult it is to save even a strong man 



.,;^A['lliij^ /^<r. 



BURCHELL S ZEBRAS FEEDING 



from utter collapse under an attack. Had not Oom Roelet possessed originally 

 a constitution of iron, he could not, I think, have passed through v/hat he did. 

 For four days we remained by this dirty mud-hole, and though N'Dale came 

 again and begged us to come over to his village in the mountains, where he said 

 the water was good, I did not like to run the risk of moving the old man in his 

 weak and exhausted condition. At the end of the fourth day he was a bit 

 better, thanks to oatmeal and whisky — a right good remedy which every Scotch- 

 man will approve of — so we packed him on the donkey waggon and, with Clas 

 for a guide, headed for the mountains. As we approached the hills the bush 



