22 ADVENTURES IN SOUTH AFRICA. 



government contractors for the supply of the troops. 

 At Beaufort, which is on the high road to Cape Town, 

 they are purchased for the supply of the Cape Town 

 market. The payments for the cattle are seldom, if 

 ever, made in hard cash, the poor trader having to con- 

 tent himself with approved bills, drawn at six and nine 

 months, which in too many cases are never honored, 

 the defaulter being found either bankrupt, or to have 

 bolted for England or California. The life of a trader 

 is hard and harassing, and he is often liable to very 

 heavy losses by deaths from severe drought, distem- 

 pers, and other causes ; also from the chances of war, 

 oxen straying and being found no more, overstocked 

 markets, and non-payments as above, besides the dan- 

 ger to which he is exposed from the attacks of wild 

 beasts. During the time that he is engaged in driving 

 his oxen, his rest is necessarily broken and disturbed, 

 and, being compelled to watch his cattle every hour of 

 the night, in all weathers, he is obliged always to have 

 his clothes on, and to sleep when he can, after the man- 

 ner of sea-captains in bad weather, who hang their nose 

 on to a ratlin, and so take a nap. As an instance of 

 the injury from chances of war, I may here allude to 

 the severe losses sustained by my friend Mr. Peter 

 Thompson, who, during the war which ravaged the 

 colony in the years 1846 and 1847, was returning to 

 Grahamstown with a large herd of some hundred fine 

 oxen, the well-earned proceeds of a laborious and toil- 

 some expedition, when he was attacked in De Bruin's 

 Poort, a rugged and densely -wooded ravine, within one 

 march of Grahamstown, by a band of the marauding 

 Amaponda Kaffirs, armed with guns and assagais, who 

 swept off the whole of his drove, he himself barely 

 escaping with his life. 



