Lying beside the road with outstretched neck and a spume of white froth
on nose and muzzle are the horses of the 2nd Mounted Brigade; with
bodies swollen by the decomposition that sets in so rapidly in this sun,
and smelling to high heaven, are the fine young horses that came so
gallantly through Kahe some ten days ago. "Brits' violets" the Tommies
call them, as they seek a site to windward to pitch their tents.
"Hyacinths" they mutter, as the wind changes in the night, and drives
them choking from their blankets, illustrating the truth of the South
African "Kopje-Book" maxim, "One horse suffices to move a camp--if he be
dead enough." For weeks after the Brigade passed through M'Kalamo the
air was full of stench, and the bush at night alive with lions coming
for the feast. For this is horse-sickness, the plague that strikes an
apparently healthy horse dead in his tracks, while the Boer trooper
hastily removes bridle and saddle and picks another horse from the drove
of remounts that follow after. No time to drag the body off the road; so
the huge motor lorries choose another track in the bush to avoid this
unwholesome obstruction.
Horse-sickness takes ten short days to develop after infection, and the
organism is so tiny that it passes through the finest filter and is
ultramicroscopic. That means that it is too small to be recognised by
the high power of an ordinary microscope. There was horse-sickness in
the bush meadows beside the river near Kahe. Careless troopers watered
their horses, after sundown, when the dew was on the grass and death
lurked in the evening moisture where it had been absent in the dry heat
of the afternoon.