United States or Panama ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
It would have been easy to make a fire, for the remains of a couple of large chests lay in one corner, but smoke curling from the holes would betray their hiding-place. "We'll make some biltong, as I've done many and many a time in South Africa," said Mr. Haydon. "In this sun the meat will parch very quickly." He cut some long and very thin slices from the leg of the buck.
From that time everything seemed to me so delightfully easy that it prognosticated certain success. The doctor came at dusk and had a chat; then the Sergeant looked us up to tell us that he had seen nothing of Joeboy, but that the butcher told him he had missed some strips of beef hung up in the sun to make biltong, and that he believed the black had taken them. "Why?" I asked sharply.
Meanwhile Foulata, at my request, stored some "biltong," or dried game-flesh, together with a couple of gourds of water, in a reed basket with a hinged cover.
Yet there is hardly one of us who is not tortured by some internal complaint, and many die simply for want of common little luxuries. In nearly all cases where I have been able to try the experiment I have cured a man with any little variety I had in store or could procure rice, chocolate, cake, tinned fruit, or soups. I wonder how the enemy are getting on with the biltong and biscuit.
"You mean more selfish," he answered, contemplating this wise little maid and her tiny portion of biltong, which she swallowed very slowly, perhaps to pretend that her appetite was already satisfied with its superabundance.
Then, as the "biltong" or sun-dried meat they had made was all consumed, they were driven to every desperate expedient that is known to the starving, such as the digging up of bulbs, the boiling of grass, twigs and leaves, the catching of lizards, and so forth. I believe that they actually ate caterpillars and earthworms.
That tough biltong tasted to me like the tenderest steak that ever came from a grill; the biscuits were ambrosial; the cheese melted in my mouth as butter melts in that of the virtuous; but when the old man finished the quaint picnic by inviting me to accompany him down to the waterside for a drink, I shook my head.
I wondered I had never heard of it before, but Karelse, who knew every inch of the country, was confident that though he had never been to the spot we should find plenty of water there; and, sure enough, nightfall brought us to the place, and there was water in abundance. Here we shared coffee and biltong, and afterwards sat smoking and yarning by the cheerful blaze of the dry fire-bush.
He shaved off some thin shreds of buffalo biltong, chewed it, and dropped it astern. An inquisitive teal watched him keenly, and, as the boat went by, made a swoop for the fragment. The incident was noticed, and a big gander, curiously tame, came sailing up, arching its neck in imitation of the swan.
The different routes were discussed, and the position of kraals, at which mealies for the five natives and the horses could be purchased, and meat possibly obtained. This, unless they bought a sheep, would be in the form of biltong, that is, strips of meat dried by being hung up in the sun and wind, and similar to the jerked meat of the prairies and pampas of America.
Word Of The Day