Fortunately we have plenty of ammunition and the place is thick with game, so that those of the men who remain strong can kill all the food we want, even shooting on foot, and we women have made a great quantity of biltong by salting flesh and drying it in the sun.

So we shall not actually starve for a long while, even if the game goes away.
"But, dear Allan, unless help comes to us I think that we shall die every one, for God alone knows the miseries that we suffer and the horrible sights of sickness and death that are around us.

At this moment there lies by me a little girl who is dying of fever.
"Oh, Allan, if you can help us, do so! Because of our sick it is impossible for us to get to Delagoa Bay, and if we did we have no money to buy anything there, for all that we had with us was lost in a wagon in a flooded river.

It was a great sum, for it included Hernan's rich fortune which he brought from the Cape with him in gold.

Nor can we move anywhere else, for we have no cattle or horses.