of this day in the greatest anxiety at the long absence of
their fellow travellers. By degrees they recovered the effects
of fasting and fatigue; but it required some caution in re-
gulatmg the appetite, after not having tasted food for three
days and two nights.
I t was observed that had the Hottentot not forsaken them
they would easily have succeeded even with, so small an instrument
as a penknife, these people being well acquainted
with the mode of slaughtering cattle by what is technically
called pithing. This mode is indeed in universal use among
the Dutch in the colony, which they pretend to say was first
received from the Hottentots; but as the practice is common
on the .continent of Europe, it is more probable the first
settlers carried it with them to the Cape. The circumstance,
however, to which they ascribe its origin is sufficiently
plausible. A buffalo having rushed upon a Hottentot and
fixed him between his horns against a large tree, the man in
the midst of his terror, -and unconscious of what he did
struck the animal a violent blow directly between the horns5
with an iron hassagai or spear which he happened to have in
his han d ; when, to his equal joy and amazement, the huge
beast dropped instantaneously on its knees, completely
paralysed. And it is remarkable enough that the tool made
use of in the Cape for pithing cattle is precisely of the same
shape and size as the iron part of a hassagai.
As the most expeditious and least painful method of taking
away the life of animals destined for the food of man is a
subject on Which humanity is very intimately concerned, and
as an opinion said to be founded on facts is circulated in.
many parts of England, that a pointed instrument thrust
into the spinal marrow at the nape of the neck produces instantaneous
death, it may not be amiss to mention here the
substance of a report of several experiments made at the
slaughtering-house at Deptford, under the direction of the
Victualling Board, in consequence of an application to that
effect from the Bishop of Durham to the Lords Commissioners
of the Admiralty.
In this report the chief clerk of the cutting-house states that,
having requested the attendance of Mr. Mellish, his foreman,
and a gentleman of the faculty, “ on the knife being thrust
“ into the spine up to the hilt, it was evident the creature
“ suffered very considerably ; and so far from its producing
* instant death, on the contrary, it continued alive and ap-
“ parently in great pain. Two out of ten thus treated were,
“ after their throats were cut, not less than ten minutes in
“ dying; and all of them, it was evident, retained their
“ senses, sight, breathing, and feeling to the last: two
“ groaned most piteously, from which and their violent
“ plunging it was but too obvious to what degree the animals
“ suffered. The people usually employed in slaughtering
** oxen were so distressed that they could not help exclaiming,
“ This is butchering indeed ! This is downright murder ! For
“ the purpose of making a comparison between this and our
“ present practice, three beasts were slaughtered in the usual
“ way. The first fell with a single blow, the second with
f. two, and the third with one only: in all the breathing in-
3 K