Sometimes the natives eat them whole, just as we eat shrimps, and, if they can afford such a luxury, add a little salt to them. Usually, however, the locusts are treated much in the same manner as corn or maize. They are ground to powder by the mill until they are reduced to meal, which is then mixed with water, so as to form a kind of porridge. A good locust season is always acceptable to the natives, who can indulge their enormous appetites to an almost unlimited extent, and in consequence become quite fat in comparison with their ordinary appearance. So valuable, indeed, are the locusts, that if a native conjurer can make his companions believe that his incantations have brought the locusts, he is sure to be richly rewarded by them. Meat, when it can be obtained, is the great luxury of a Kaffir. Beef is his favorite meat; but he will eat that of many of the native animals, though there are some, including all kinds of fish, which he will not touch. With a very few exceptions, such as the eland, the wild animals of Southern Africa do not furnish very succulent food. Venison when taken from a semi-domesticated red deer, or a three-parts domesticated fallow deer, is a very different meat when obtained from a wild deer or antelope. As a general rule, such animals have very little fat about them, and their flesh, by reason of constant exercise and small supply of food, is exceedingly tough, and would baffle the jaws of any but a very hungry man. Fortunately for the Kaffirs, their teeth and jaws are equal to any task that can be imposed upon them in the way of mastication, and meat which an European can hardly manage to eat is a dainty to his dark companions. The late Gordon Cumming, who had as much experience in hunter life as most men, used to say that a very good idea of the meat which is usually obtained by the gun in Kaffirland may be gained by taking the very worst part of the toughest possible beef, multiplying the toughness by ten, and subtracting all the gravy. The usual plan that is adopted is, to eat at once the best parts of an animal, and to cure the rest by drying it in the sun. This process is a very simple one. The meat is cut into thin, long strips, and hung on branches in the open air. The burning sunbeams soon have their effect, and convert the scarlet strips of raw meat into a substance that looks like old shoe-leather, and is nearly as tough. The mode of dressing it is, to put it under the ashes of the fire, next to pound it between two stones, and then to stew it slowly in a pot, just as is done with fresh beef. Of course, this mode of cooking meat is only employed on the march, when the soldiers are unable to take with them the cooking-pots of domestic life.