To-morrow we begin to turn our heads towards home, but we must wait for the cattle. Hintza has sent in all directions for it, and it is to be here in five days from to-morrow’s sun.
How you would laugh to see me walking about the camp with Hintza leaning on my arm!
Four o’clock, 30th April.
What do you think has been my occupation for this last half-hour? One very much in my way. Stringing a large necklace of glass beads for young Hintza. I have just hung it round his neck in three rows.
1st May.
Just four months to-day since I left you, dearest. What a time it does appear! Good heavens! four years at least.
There never were such game fellows as these Hottentots. The other night in the Kei, after a terrific march, when we got up to the enemy, I halloed them on like a pack of hounds, and, upon my word, they flew past me through the bush like buffaloes, making everything crack before them.
Only fancy, my dear old woman, what must have been my five days’ late campaign. I never shaved from the 24th to the evening of the 29th, nor did I ever comb my hair. My toothbrush my only luxury. I changed my pantaloons because in a cattle hunt the mimosa bushes literally tore them off. The difficulty of obtaining information where anything is going on occupies every moment one has off horseback. One of the days I was out, Paddy Balfour—meaning well, God knows—sent my led horses with the infantry, and at night I had the gratification to find myself 25 miles from them. We had lots of cattle, but killing and eating two hours after dark is rather a bore. Luckily, one of the men gave me a bit of tongue—no salt nor biscuit, but I was delighted with it. Next morning, on joining the infantry, having had no cup of coffee, I was so hungry, by heavens! I could have bit a piece out of my wife’s shoulder, when one of the escort hauled out of a dirty haversack a bone of a goat, which he had already had a gnaw at. So I turned to at that, and gnawed it as greedily as little Moira seizes everything out of one’s hand. However, after joining my horses, I had a real good breakfast, and we then marched 25 miles over mountains steeper than the Pyrenees, and the weather down in the Amava was exceedingly hot. However, we have overcome all difficulties.
8 o’clock in the evening, 1st May.