For vegetables, too, our livers waxed torpid, and our blood boiled in vain.  The potato was gone; the benefits conferred on posterity by Sir Walter Raleigh were at length realised in a negative way.  Miniature “Murphies” fetched four pence halfpenny each, while an adult member of the genus at ninepence was worth two of the little ones.  Mr. Rhodes may have luxuriated on potatoes (cum grano salis!) but few others were so very Irish.  The De Beers Company owned a large garden, and that this should have been given over to the hospital was a delicate consideration of which even the dyspeptic could not complain.  Cabbages were a dream.  Of cauliflowers a memory lingered.  Soft words buttered no parsnips.  Onions were “off”—­so we went on weeping.  Everything in the garden but some wizened carrots had withered away.  Such carrots! small, cadaverous, brick-coloured things, no bigger than a cork, as dry, as masticable, and, still like a cork, with little save a smell to commend their indulgence.  But like the donkeys that we were, we ate them every time!

Talking of corks reminds me of bottles, and the precious little that was in them.  We had no whiskey; think of that, ye Banks and Braes!  There were nice crystal brands in the hotel windows, but—­I shall be dealing later with oils.  Sceptical tipplers, whose every feature spelled whiskey, were reduced to the painful necessity of diluting their sodas with lime juice; and so strongly did the “claret” taste of timber that the beverage was adjudged a non-intoxicant with extraordinary unanimity!  Port and sherry, being beyond our reach, were despised, like our neighbour’s sour grapes.  The publican, however, had good spirits still; Cape brandy (or “Smoke,” as it was called) found a market at last, and swelled heads enormously.  But if the signs and portents of a drought in beer and stout were to be trusted, the unkindest cut of all was yet to come.  And it did come.  In the thirsty clime of Kimberley the consumption of the brewer’s goods was large; and in the restaurants, with bars attached, good meals were sold cheaply to facilitate the sale of the beer which “washed” the food down.  When the drought came the proprietors of these delectable taverns promptly raised their charges by fifty per cent., albeit the value and the variety of the victuals had lessened.  Men in receipt of good wages loved beer and indulged the passion freely.  The addition of the Imperial allowances to their incomes had intensified their thirst.  Then there were the unusual conditions under which they lived, the paucity of provisions, the great heat—­all these things tended to damage temperance and to exalt the flowing bowl.  A multitude suffered when beer and stout gave out.  The tipplers grew pale and visibly thinner; nature made her exactions with unwonted abruptness.  A certain degree of sympathy was felt for the Bacchanals, by none more sincerely than by the druggist—­artful