head hanging down. He had got the redwater, I was sure of it. Of all
the difficulties connected with life and travelling in South Africa
those connected with oxen are perhaps the worst. The ox is the most
exasperating animal in the world, a negro excepted. He has absolutely
no constitution, and never neglects an opportunity of falling sick of
some mysterious disease. He will get thin upon the slightest
provocation, and from mere maliciousness die of 'poverty'; whereas it
is his chief delight to turn round and refuse to pull whenever he
finds himself well in the centre of a river, or the waggon-wheel
nicely fast in a mud hole. Drive him a few miles over rough roads and
you will find that he is footsore; turn him loose to feed and you will
discover that he has run away, or if he has not run away he has of
malice aforethought eaten 'tulip' and poisoned himself. There is
always something with him. The ox is a brute. It was of a piece with
his accustomed behaviour for the one in question to break out--on
purpose probably--with redwater just when a lion had walked off with
his herd. It was exactly what I should have expected, and I was
therefore neither disappointed nor surprised.

"Well, it was no use crying as I should almost have liked to do,
because if this ox had redwater it was probable that the rest of them
had it too, although they had been sold to me as 'salted,' that is,
proof against such diseases as redwater and lungsick. One gets
hardened to this sort of thing in South Africa in course of time, for
I suppose in no other country in the world is the waste of animal life
so great.

"So taking my rifle and telling Harry to follow me (for we had to
leave Pharaoh to look after the oxen--Pharaoh's lean kine, I called
them), I started to see if anything could be found of or appertaining