411 
THE BRITISH OX. 
are distended by a piece of wood, to form an easier rest for the 
foot. While the animal’s nose is still sore, it is mounted and 
put in training, and in a week or two is generally rendered suf¬ 
ficiently obedient to its rider. The facility and adroitness with 
which the Hottentots manage the ox has often excited my admi¬ 
ration : it is made to walk, trot, or gallop, at the will of its 
master; and being longer legged and rather more lightly made 
than the ox in England, travels with greater ease and expedition, 
walking three or four miles in an hour, trotting five, and galloping, 
on an emergency, seven or eight.” 
Major Denham, in his Travels into Central Africa, gives the 
following amusing account of some of these excursions :— 
“ The beasts of burden used by the inhabitants are the bul¬ 
lock and the ass. A very fine breed of the latter are found in the 
Mandara valleys. Strangers and chiefs in the service of sheikh 
or sultan alone possess camels. The bullock is the bearer of all 
the grain and other articles to and from the markets. A small 
saddle of plaited rushes is laid on him, when sacks made of goat 
skins, and filled with corn, are lashed on his broad and able 
back. A leather thong is passed through the cartilage of his 
nose, and serves as a bridle, while on the top of the load is 
mounted the owner, his wife, or his slave. Sometimes the 
daughter or the wife of a rich Shouaa will be mounted on her 
particular bullock, and precede the loaded animals, extravagantly 
adorned with amber, silver rings, coral, and all sorts of finery, 
her hair streaming with fat, a black rim of kohal, at least an 
inch wide, round each of her eyes, and I may say arrayed for 
conquest at the crowded market. Carpet or robes are then spread 
on her clumsy palfry,—she sits jambe de ca jambe de la ,—and with 
considerable grace guides her animal by the nose. Notwith¬ 
standing the peaceableness of his nature, her vanity still enables 
her to torture him into something like caperings and curvetings.” 
It is, however, in the southern part of Africa that the triumph 
of the ox is complete. His intelligence seems to exceed any 
thing that we have seen of the horse, and he is but little inferior 
to that most sagacious of all quadrupeds, the dog. Among the 
Hottentots, these animals are their domestics, and the companions 
of their pleasures and fatigues ; they are both the protectors and 
