Some Escape By Running
Over The Others, As A Smithfield Market-Dog Does Over The Sheep's Backs.
It Is A Frightful Scene.
The men, wild with excitement,
spear the lovely animals with mad delight; others of the poor creatures,
borne down by the weight of their dead and dying companions,
every now and then make the whole mass heave in their smothering agonies.
The Bakwains often killed between sixty and seventy head of large game
at the different hopos in a single week; and as every one, both rich and poor,
partook of the prey, the meat counteracted the bad effects
of an exclusively vegetable diet. When the poor, who had no salt,
were forced to live entirely on roots, they were often troubled
with indigestion. Such cases we had frequent opportunities of seeing
at other times, for, the district being destitute of salt,
the rich alone could afford to buy it. The native doctors,
aware of the cause of the malady, usually prescribed some of that ingredient
with their medicines. The doctors themselves had none, so the poor
resorted to us for aid. We took the hint, and henceforth cured the disease
by giving a teaspoonful of salt, minus the other remedies.
Either milk or meat had the same effect, though not so rapidly as salt.
Long afterward, when I was myself deprived of salt for four months,
at two distinct periods, I felt no desire for that condiment,
but I was plagued by very great longing for the above articles of food.
This continued as long as I was confined to an exclusively vegetable diet,
and when I procured a meal of flesh, though boiled in
perfectly fresh rain-water, it tasted as pleasantly saltish
as if slightly impregnated with the condiment.
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