DAILY ALLOWANCES. (CHAP. V.
acted on was as follows. A sheep gives twenty meals, no bread or other vegetables being allowed, and a man cannot work well with less than two meals a day. A sheep therefore feeds ten people for one day. An average ox is equivalent to seven sheep, and it therefore feeds seventy people for one day, or thirty-five for two, or twenty-four for three. I cannot accurately say what the quantity of food is that different kinds of game afford, as waste always goes on when one is slaughtered, but, as a rough allowance, I considered
I possessed seventy-five oxen and one calf; of these fifty-seven had been inspanned, including the ride- and pack-oxen. My ride-oxen were Frieschland, Ceylon, Timmerman, Buchau, and Fairland. Andersson had Spring. All these would also carry packs as a matter of course, but there were others simply pack-oxen. Hans had three ride-oxen, six cows, and five calves ; John Allen had two ride-oxen. There were also two heifers that belonged to some of the other men. Gross total of oxen, and cows and calves, ninety-four ; but my own flock of sheep was reduced to twenty-four. I had therefore (allowing twenty slaughter oxen) full provisions for two and a half months for all my party, independently of game. This was not nearly as much as I should have liked, but I trusted to buy more on my journey, and also to get some shooting.
Alfarch 4t7z.-This was our most difficult day: the Swakop ran through a gorge so broken and narrow, as not to admit a waggon, and the only road we could find out of it lay for some considerable distance along a narrow ridge of jagged rock with a precipitous fall on our left. Hakis thorns and ravines made the country quite impenetrable everywhere else ; our road was horrible ; the waggon crashed and thundered and thumped, but somehow or other got safe over. If I had to undergo two or three more such days of journeyings, the waggons would have to be left behind. The oxen were dreadfully wild; there was no guiding or restraining them down hill, but they tossed themselves about and charged like wild buffaloes; it still took us an hour and a
i Springbok, or roebuck
i Hartebeest
i Zebra, or gnu, or gemsbok i Giraffe .
i Black or Keitloa rhinoceros i White .
• equal to i sheep.
„ 2 f,
„ 4 „
• „ 2 oxen.
• , 3 ,,
• ,, 4 n
