veins, and was the worst possible thing for him.  The doctors here seem agreed that the treatment of ammonia and brandy is the safest, and many instances are adduced to show how successful it has been, though one party of practitioners admits the ammonia, but denies the brandy.  On the other hand, one hears of a child bitten by a snake and swallowing half a large bottle of raw brandy in half an hour without its head being at all affected, and, what is more, recovering from the bite and living happy ever after.  I keep quantities of both remedies close at hand, for three or four venomous snakes have been killed within a dozen yards of the house, and little G——­ is perpetually exploring the long grass all around or hunting for a stray cricket-ball or a pegtop in one of those beautiful fern-filled ditches whose tangle of creepers and plumy ferns is exactly the favorite haunt of snakes.  As yet he has brought back from these forbidden raids nothing more than a few ticks and millions of burs.

As for the ticks, I am getting over my horror at having to dislodge them from among the baby’s soft curls by means of a sharp needle, and even G——­ only shouts with laughter at discovering a great swollen monster hanging on by its forceps to his leg.  They torment the poor horses and dogs dreadfully; and if the said horses were not the very quietest, meekest, most underbred and depressed animals in the world, we should certainly hear of more accidents.  As it is, they confine their efforts to get rid of their tormentors to rubbing all the hair off their tails and sides in patches against the stable walls or the trunk of a tree.  Indeed, the clever way G——­’s miserable little Basuto pony actually climbs inside a good-sized bush, and sways himself about in it with his legs off the ground until the whole thing comes with a crash to the ground, is edifying to behold to every one except the owner of the tree.  Tom, the Kafir boy, tried hard to persuade me the other day that the pony was to blame for the destruction of a peach tree, but as the only broken-down branches were those which had been laden with fruit, I am inclined to acquit the pony.  Carbolic soap is an excellent thing to wash both dogs and horses with, as it not only keeps away flies and ticks from the skin, which, is constantly rubbed off by incessant scratching, but helps to heal the tendency to a sore place.  Indeed, nothing frightened me so much as what I heard when I first arrived about Natal sores and Natal boils.  Everybody told me that ever so slight a cut or abrasion went on slowly festering, and that sores on children’s faces were quite common.  This sounded very dreadful, but I am beginning to hope it was an exaggeration, for whenever G——­ cuts or knocks himself (which is every day or so), or scratches an insect’s bite into a bad place, I wash the part with a little carbolic soap (there are two sorts—­one for animals and a more refined preparation for the human skin), and it is quite well the next day.  We have all had a threatening of those horrid boils, but they have passed off.