The two orderlies for the day brought from the kitchen a huge
tea-urn, some dozen bowls, and two large loaves. We supplemented this
rudimentary fare with a pot of "Cape gooseberry" jam, the gift of a
generous donor, and improved the quality of the tea with a little
condensed milk. Fresh from the usages of a more effete civilisation I
did not feel after two cups of tea and some butterless bread that
"satisfaction of a felt want"--to quote Aristotle--which comes, say,
after a dinner with the Drapers' Company in London, and for two nights I
tore open and devoured with my ward-companion a tin of salmon which I
bought from a Jew along the line. But, strange to say, after a few days
of this _regime_, which in its chronological sequence of meals and its
strange simplicity recalled the memories of early childhood, my
internal economy seemed to have adapted itself to the changed
environment, and after five o'clock with its tea and bread I no longer
wished for more food. Exactly the same experience befalls those
inexperienced travellers in tropical countries who, at first, are
continually imbibing draughts of water, but soon learn the useful lesson
of drinking at meal-time only, and before long do not even take the
trouble to carry water-bottles with them at all.
Our destination was supposed to be De Aar, but nobody ever knew exactly
where we were going or what we were going to do when we got there.
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