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The Colonial raised his head; and without taking his elbows from the ground took up the bird. "I'll put it into the pot; it'll give it the flavour of something except weevily mealies"; he said, and fell to plucking it. The Englishman took his hat off, and lifted the fine damp hair from his forehead. "Knocked up, eh?" said the Colonial, glancing kindly up at him.
Above her head myriads of locusts floated in a darkening mass. The mealie stalks were only a foot or so high, but the locusts knew that they were green, and therefore good to eat, so they hovered around. The mealies were in rows, and between these rows galloped half-a-dozen horses carrying half-a-dozen very raw natives.
We can see lots of babies crawling about the hole which serves as door to a Kafir hut, and they are all as fat as little pigs; but what do they live on? Buttermilk, I am told that is to say, sour milk, for the true Kafir palate does not appreciate fresh, sweet milk and a sort of porridge made of mealies.
Two of the labourers were employed in hoeing the young mealies, and, strange as it may seem, others at the same time were engaged in picking off the ripe cobs, stripping back their leafy covering, and hanging them in pairs across rails, where they could further dry, until they were carried to the granary.
And those who will eat meat get 8 oz. twice a week instead of mealies. The Kaffir ration is simpler: fresh meat, 1 lb.; mealie meal, 3/4 lb.; salt, 1/2 oz. February 1, 1900. How we should have laughed in November at the thought of being shut up here till February? But here we are, and the outlook grows more hopeless. People are miserably depressed.
In this pitiable condition they had been forced to keep night-watch on the hill-crests, in the rain, to lie in the trenches, and to work on fortifications and bomb-proofs. And they were expected to do all of these things on what strength they could get from horse-meat, biscuits of the toughness and composition of those that are fed to dogs, and on "mealies," which is what we call corn.
"Drill them? Ah! there is a baboon called a `drill. Yes, go on," I said. "We could send them out every night, and they'd come back laden with mealies for us; and there you are." "Nice evening, gentlemen," said Sergeant Briggs, who had just climbed to our side. "I've been using the Major's glass. My word! they've got wagon after wagon loaded with stores across yonder.
It was four days before he was able to re-enter the British lines, during which time he had been lying in the open veldt, and had subsisted on one biscuit and two handfuls of "mealies," or what we call Indian corn. Another time when out scouting he and his Kaffir boy while on foot were "jumped" by a Boer commando and forced to hide in two great ant-hills.
I sat watching the job and smoking the pipe of contentment, when suddenly the bush opened, and a very handsome and dignified native girl, apparently about twenty years of age, stood before me, carrying a basket of green mealies upon her head.
The natives witnessed the preparations for the departure of their white friends with every manifestation of sincere regret, assisting to drive up and inspan the oxen, presenting a fine milch cow for Leo's especial benefit, as well as quantities of mealies, bananas, and other garden produce, warning the travellers of various difficulties and dangers that lurked on the next hundred miles or so of their route, and carefully instructing them how they might best be avoided, and in many other ways making plain the sorrow with which they bade them farewell.
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