It must be admitted that there is something of the gentleman about the raw, untutored savage, for when the first train had crossed safely over the Victoria Falls Bridge, Mkuni stood alone on his rock. No one remained as witness to his discomfiture.
He climbed slowly down to his village. Everyone in it was busy with his or her ordinary daily occupation; all strangers had quietly gone their several ways.
THE COMPLEAT ANGLER.
R. E. Baker was engaged as conductor of our waggons on one of our journeys from Bulawayo to the Zambesi, and a more capable cattle-man than he did not, I am sure, exist between the Cape and Cairo.
If an ox wouldn't pull, he made it. If an ox went sick, he cured it with amazing rapidity.
Baker, though English by descent, was a Cape Dutchman through and through. A bad-natured ox he named "Englishman," and flogged the wretched beast into a better frame of mind.
On the other hand, he would walk miles to find good grazing for his cattle, and to see Baker caress an ox was a thing to remember. Not being a cattle-man myself, I thought our conductor was gouging out the eye of an ox. It certainly looked uncommonly like it. He was forcing his fist with a rotary movement into the beast's eye.
In answer to my questioning, he explained that he was caressing the ox, that cattle appreciated the attention; you had to be vigorous or you tickled the poor thing, and oxen didn't like being tickled.