The result was that within two days I had forty or fifty to choose from, small animals of the Zulu character and, I should add, unbroken.

Still they were sturdy and used to that veld and its diseases.

Here it was that my twelve trained beasts came in.

By putting six of them to each wagon, two as fore- and two as after-oxen, and two in the middle, Hans and I were able to get the other ten necessary to make up a team of sixteen under some sort of control.
Heavens! how we worked during the week or so which went by before it was possible for me to leave Lorenzo Marquez.

What with mending up and loading the wagons, buying and breaking in the wild oxen, purchasing provisions, hiring native servants--of whom I was lucky enough to secure eight who belonged to one of the Zulu tribes and desired to get back to their own country, whence they had wandered with some Boers, I do not think that we slept more than two or three hours out of the twenty-four.
But, it may be asked, what was my aim, whither went I, what inquiries had I made?
To answer the last question first, I had made every possible inquiry, but with little or no result.