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Updated: May 2, 2025
It cheered the poor Bush-lancers, it cheered the 'trek boers' all, It made them gladly answer to freedom's battle call. Lord Roberts gave up fighting, he did not care a rap, But left his dear old 'Lady, who's fond of mealie-pap. Of our dear wives and children he burned the happy homes, He likes to worry Tantes but fears the sturdy Ooms.
I shall confine my congratulations to the genius of one resourceful landlady who furnished, in addition to "mealie-pap" allowed by "Law," some illicit tit-bits of meat, as a surprise! But she did not cease staggering humanity until a small dish of butter was produced. Real butter! the lady's character made her word sacred.
But they reckoned without their host; there is nothing asinine about Martial Law; a closer perusal of the proclamation would have taught them that Kekewich and Gorle were old soldiers; that anybody buying meal or flour could not buy bread, and vice versa. Even "mealie-pap," ad lib., we had perforce to forego; the "Law" allowed it but once a day.
Notably is this so in the case of those called novels, which are stiff as mealie-pap with lies that fill the heads of silly girls with vain imaginings, causing them to neglect their household duties and to look out of the corners of their eyes at young men of whom their elders do not approve.
Wood was scarce on the Hoogeveld where we happened to be, and the water was muddied by the first water-carriers. When the sun was very warm we made a shelter with our guns and our blankets. Our meals were simple. They consisted of meat and 'mealie-pap' morning, noon, and night, often for weeks without salt. We made coffee of burnt grain ground in a coffee-mill.
The poor Native's breakfast was of "mealie-pap" exclusively; and from a hygienic standpoint he was perhaps better off than any of us. Many things occurred to make the day interesting, or say, rather, out of the common; but the palm was easily carried off by the Colonel's "gift." This untimely experiment in economics had discouraged the Natives and practically sent them out on strike.
There was nothing to fall back on but "mealie-pap," an imitation porridge, made of fine white mealie meal; the very colour of if tired one; white stirabout, connoisseurs opined, was not a natural thing. There were scores who would not touch "mealie-pap" with a forty-foot spoon. But they changed in time; "I am an acquired taste," cries Katisha; so is "mealie-pap."
The pathos of it all was that we got plenty of tea. We had no milk, and because we needed in consequence all the more sugar we were given less; and as "mealie-pap" had pride of place on the menu the day's allowance of sugar was only too apt to be recklessly monopolised in giving that a taste. We were observing a protracted lenten season, a more rigorous fast than any Church prescribes.
To-night the varied smell all over the town is hardly endurable. January 12, 1900. A quiet day again. Hardly a gun was fired. Wild rumours flew the Boers were trekking north in crowds they were moving the gun on Bulwan all lies! I spent the whole day trying to induce a Kaffir to risk his life for £15. A Kaffir lives on mealie-pap, varied by an occasional cow's head.
Then there was a worse feature than this limitation indicated. "Mealie-pap" without milk was bad enough; minus sugar it was unthinkable. But the "Law" would not permit us to sweeten the "pap" any more that is to say, the reduced allowance of sugar was all too little for neutralising the insipidity of black tea.
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