As we sat round our fires that night we heard shots fired in the distance from the direction that we had come. Some men were sent out immediately, and returned after a while with a man quite exhausted from hunger and thirst, and paralyzed with fear; he had been unable to overtake the lager.
IX
PRACTICAL HINTS—ADVENTURE ON THE SABIE—NORTH OF LYDENBURG
Experience teaches us. The knowledge that we have gained in this war we must pass on to the coming generation. It may be of use in a war of the future, or on some other occasion. Therefore Oom Dietlof will take this opportunity to give his nephews in South Africa some practical hints that may be of use to a burgher in his travels or in a war. If anyone loses his way in the same way that I have just described, he must remember the following way of finding the four quarters of the wind:
The small hand of a watch describes a circle in twelve hours, while the apparent movement of the sun round the earth is in twenty-four hours. The movement of the small hand is therefore twice as fast as that of the sun. If one points the small hand of a horizontal-lying watch to the sun at twelve o'clock, then the hands and the figure XII. lie in the meridian as well as the sun.
In the northern half-circle the sun and the hands move in the same direction. In one hour's time the small hand goes a distance of 360°/12 = 30°, and the sun goes a distance of 360°/24 = 15°. If at one o'clock one points the small hand of a horizontal-lying watch to the sun, the line that divides the acute angle between the figures I. and XII. lies in the meridian. So one can always find the meridian.
In the southern half-circle the sun and hands move in opposite directions, therefore one must point the figure XII. to the sun, and 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.