forage, or you will not get to your journey's end. We did manage to supply ourselves, sometimes carrying a large roll of it inside the cart as well as a sack filled with it outside. Every farmer grows a little of it through the country; and the storekeepers along the road, who buy it at 3d. a bundle sell it for a shilling or eighteen pence in accordance with their conscience. But yet we were always in alarm lest we should find ourselves without it. A horse requires about six bundles a day to be adequately fed for continual work. "Have you got forage?" was the first question always asked when the cart was stopped and one of us descended to enquire as to the accommodation that might be forthcoming.
We travelled something over thirty miles a day, always being careful not to allow the horses to remain at their work above two hours and a half at a time. Then we would "out-span,"—take the horses out from the carriage, knee-hobble them and turn them loose with their forage spread upon the ground. Then all our energies would be devoted to the tea kettle and the frying pan.
As we travelled most heartrending accounts reached us of the fate of my companions from Pieter Maritzburg to Newcastle, who had pursued their journey by the mail cart to Pretoria. This conveyance is not supposed absolutely to travel night and day;—nor does it go regularly by day and stop regularly by night in a Christian fashion, but makes its progress with such diminished periods of relaxation as the condition of the animals drawing it may create. If the roads and animals be good, four or six hours in the twenty-four may be allowed to the weary passengers;—*
