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Out of the six nurses, one has died and three others have had enteric. Of the five dressers, two have had severe enteric. The wardmaster has spent a fortnight in bed with veldt sores. The washerman has enteric. Of the eighteen orderlies, one is dead, and eight others are down with enteric. So that out of a total of thirty-four we have had seventeen severe casualties fifty per cent. in nine weeks.
She leaned lower, and it was as though her gaze looked beyond the darkness to some unseen horizon. She saw the veldt with its far blue mountains, that called to men again and again with such resolute calling. Overhead, in her fancy, she saw the luminous Southern Cross. All around were the wide, boundless horizons, the swift, scented winds.
Only the great thoroughbred horse winded them and snorted, pulling at the riem with which he was tied to the hind wheel of the waggon. "Something has frightened the schimmel," said the driver waking up. "It is nothing," answered the other boy drowsily; "he is not used to the veldt, he who always sleeps in a house like a man; or, perhaps, he smells a hyena in the kloof."
We, therefore, were justified in believing that the Boer representatives had abandoned all idea of Independence, and that they would make terms for the surrender of the forces still in the Veldt.
I had with me a portion of the Harrismith burghers, the commandos from Vrede and Frankfort, and sections of the commandos from Standerton and Wakkerstroom, these latter under Commandant Alberts. This Commandant had come to these districts to obtain horses for his burghers; he was obliged to be content with the wild horses of the veldt, for there were no others to be had.
The daylight came, and Chaka rose, saying, "Come, let us go forth, Mopo, and look on those who mourn with us." So we went out, and after us came men armed with clubs to do the bidding of the king. Outside the kraal the people were gathered, and their number was countless as the leaves upon the trees. On every side the land was black with them, as at times the veldt is black with game.
I made sacrifices, I fasted in the veldt alone, I did all those things of which you have heard, and I learned much; for there is wisdom in our magic as well as lies and you know it, my father, else you had not come here to ask me about your lost oxen. So things went on till I was twenty years of age a man full grown.
The Rand gold fields are a stupendous marvel, and they make all other gold fields small, but I was not a stranger to gold-mining; the veldt was a noble thing to see, but it was only another and lovelier variety of our Great Plains; the natives were very far from being uninteresting, but they were not new; and as for the towns, I could find my way without a guide through the most of them because I had learned the streets, under other names, in towns just like them in other lands; but the diamond mine was a wholly fresh thing, a splendid and absorbing novelty.
He said that his grace the Bishop of a certain See was once making a business-progress through the tavernless veldt, and one night he stopped with a Boer; after supper was shown to bed; he undressed, weary and worn out, and was soon sound asleep; in the night he woke up feeling crowded and suffocated, and found the old Boer and his fat wife in bed with him, one on each side, with all their clothes on, and snoring.
M.T. Steyn, W.J.C. Brebner, C.R. de Wet, J.B.M. Hertzog, and C.H. Olivier on behalf of the Government of the Orange Free State and its burghers, being anxious to put an end to the existing hostilities, agree on the following points: 'Firstly, the burgher forces now in the Veldt shall at once lay down their arms, and surrender all the guns, small arms, and war stores in their actual possession, or of which they have cognizance, and shall abstain from any further opposition to the authority of His Majesty King Edward VII., whom they acknowledge as their lawful sovereign.
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