Notes on South African Hunting. 
67 
A dark ride. 
apparently pounded up and mixed with sand, 
dead leaves, or any other foreign matter what¬ 
ever. When the manufacturing heathen have 
adulterated it to their taste, they make it into 
lumps about the size of a cocoanut by mixing 
it with blood, and sell it for what they can get. 
It tastes like hay soaked in vitriol, and requires 
on an average a box of matches to a pipe. 
The decision of our council of war was that 
I should take the remaining horse and a little 
food, and go on till I caught the Kaffirs up, 
and Ayton follow up with the boys and the 
driven horse. I rode on about twelve miles 
and then my horse began to get tired, so I 
determined to wait till moonrise—it was now 
about 3 p.m.—and ride on through the night. 
The moon was young, the night was very 
cloudy, and the road was overgrown with haak- 
thorn—a thorn like a hook, which takes out 
solid lumps of one—so when I got to the water 
I had no face left worth mentioning, and my 
clothes, before in rags, were now in shreds. I 
could see nothing of the Kaffirs, and here my 
poor old horse declined to go farther, so I had 
to off-saddle for the night; and, as there was 
