432 A JOURNEY IN 
of this day in the greatest anxiety at the long absence of 
their fellow travellers. By degrees they recovered the effects 
of fasting and fatigue ; but it required some caution in re- 
gulating the appetite, after not having tasted food for three 
iVdys and two nights. 
It was obser\ ed that had the Hottentot not forsaken them 
thev would easily have succeeded even wdth so small an in- 
strument as a penknife, these people being well acquainted 
with the mode of slaughtering cattle by what is technically 
called pithins;. This mode is indeed in universal use amono- 
the Dutch in the colony, which they pretend to say was first 
received from the Hottentots ; but as the practice is common 
on the continent of Europe, it is more probable the first 
settlers carried it with them to the Cape. The circumstance, 
liowe\'er, to which they ascribe its origin is sufificiently 
plausible. A buffalo having rushed upon a Hottentot and 
fixed him between his horns against a large tree, the man in 
the midst of his terror, and unconscious of what he did, 
struck the animal a violent blow directly between the horns 
with an iron hassagai or spear which he happened to have in 
his hand ; when, to his equal joy ai\^ amazement, the huge 
beast dropped instantaneously on its knees, .completely 
paralysed. And it is remarkable enough that the tool made 
use of in the Cape for pithing cattle is precisely of the same 
shape and size as the iron part of a hassagai. 
As the most expeditious and least painful method of takino> 
away the hfe of animals destined for the food of man is a 
subject on Avhich humanity is very intimately concerned, and 
