then divide the acute angle between the figure XII. and the small hand
to find the meridian.

In this way one can at any time find out the direction one has taken.
But everyone has not always a good watch, and the sun sometimes hides
behind the clouds. Then it is better to have a good compass--but better
still not to lose one's way.

Besides such simple articles as a pocket-knife, a water-bag, etc.,
which are indispensable to a traveller in our country, everyone ought to
carry with him a good plaster, a nosebag, and some snake poison; maize
(mealies) for his horse, the cheapest and most strengthening food that
we know of, can always be carried in the nosebag. Snake poison prepared
by a good Kaffir doctor is the only cure for snake-bites or the bite of
any poisonous insect. The Kaffirs prepare it from some (to us) unknown
shrub, and from the poison of the most venomous snake, which they make
into a powder. This powder is used as an antidote by swallowing a small
dose--enough to cover the point of a pocket-knife--and also by applying
some to the bite, after first having cut an opening into the bitten part
with a pocket-knife. Some people protect themselves against the poison
of a snake-bite by regularly swallowing some of the poison and
vaccinating themselves with it. One can even protect one's self in this
way against the bite of the poisonous file-snake of the Boschveld--a
snake the shape of a three-cornered file, sometimes from 3 to 4 feet
long. It is a fact that the person whose body is proof against the
poison of a snake-bite is never bitten, as he is feared by snakes.
Formerly I doubted it, but I have myself seen people who have made
themselves proof against a bite in this way, and I have also heard it
from people in whom I have the utmost faith.