Besides the everlasting worry of keeping the English community in hand, the Boers have been visited by other plagues, such as rinderpest. In 1897 such a calamity befell them, and although the rich farmers did not suffer materially, the poorer class experienced reverses sufficient to discourage them for life. The mistake made was simply this (and it is characteristic of the Boers): every individual farmer and owner of stock exercised his own judgment throughout, and the most drastic results followed as a consequence. Temporary excitement naturally took the place of clear judgment. A man may be possessed of all his faculties and yet lack that knowledge which would save 95 per cent. of his cattle. The desire to save the cattle was there, but the farmers were too prone to accept the first method which turned up. Without even considering thoroughly the merits and demerits of any particular method, they rushed at it with the same prospect of success as might be attributed to a blind man going in search of the North Pole. Of course the system would 'either kill or cure.' That was how the majority of them put it. The veterinary surgeons received very little encouragement. If a Boer makes up his mind that his cattle are going to die, he likes to have all the honour of killing them himself, and he does not want any vet. about his place, propounding advanced theories which he does not understand. Added to this, it appears that when the disease first made its appearance in the country, certain vets, made themselves so ridiculous in the eyes of the farmers who invited them to inspect sick cattle, that distrust immediately took the place of suspicion, and confidence was never established. [Illustration: BOER CATTLE FARM NEAR MAJUBA.] The farmers who managed to save a considerable number of cattle were not slow to make hay while the sun shone, and some of them may probably have turned up their noses at the mere mention of the Yukon goldfields. Prospecting for gold is a somewhat risky business, but the Boer looks upon transactions in salted oxen as eminently satisfactory, more especially where the buyer negotiates the risks. Nothing affords him more pleasure than to hand over twenty or thirty oxen, and receive in exchange twenty-five pounds per head. But, unlike the English problem, rinderpest is not always with the Boer. In this connection there is a story to the effect that a certain Boer farmer discovered one day that his cattle had contracted a very serious disease, and he was advised by the Government vet., who happened to be passing that way, to inoculate immediately, and after the lapse of ten days to repeat the process. When the vet. returned a few weeks later he was surprised to learn that the majority of the cattle had died. 'But that was impossible if you acted on the instructions I gave you,' he said to the farmer. 'Ja!' answered the latter, 'that may be, but I didn't do what you told me; I only inoculated once.'