'But that was impossible if you acted on the instructions I gave
you,' he said to the farmer.

'Ja!' answered the latter, 'that may be, but I didn't do what you told
me; I only inoculated once.'

'And why didn't you do it a second time?' pursued the vet.

'Oh,' replied the Boer, 'because the vrouw said I hadn't to.'

[Illustration: SHOOTING RINDERPEST OXEN.]

The Boer seldom does anything without first consulting his wife, and it
is hinted that the wives made a very bad job of the rinderpest. The
vrouw steers the ship. It is so when the whole family goes to town to
make the half-yearly purchases. In the stores the husband will be found
in deep and earnest conversation with his better half, relative perhaps
to the quantity of barbed wire or coffee or woolpacks--anything and
everything required at the time. All this would seem to point to a
plain fact, namely, that the vrouw not only excels in physical
proportions, but also in the matter of brains. There can be no doubt
about the first mentioned, and there seems to be little question about
the other as well. It is authoritatively stated that at the time of the
Boer War the women were so bitter against the English that they spurred
on the men to do things which they themselves deemed foolhardy. This
anti-English feeling seems to have been intensified since then, and it
is often jocularly remarked by Englishmen in the country that so long
as an enemy makes things square with the womenfolk they need have no
fear of the men. The women may have the reputation of knowing and doing