Carbolic soap is an excellent thing to wash
both dogs and horses with, as it not only keeps away flies and ticks
from the skin, which, is constantly rubbed off by incessant scratching,
but helps to heal the tendency to a sore place. Indeed, nothing
frightened me so much as what I heard when I first arrived about Natal
sores and Natal boils. Everybody told me that ever so slight a cut or
abrasion went on slowly festering, and that sores on children's faces
were quite common. This sounded very dreadful, but I am beginning to
hope it was an exaggeration, for whenever G---- cuts or knocks himself
(which is every day or so), or scratches an insect's bite into a bad
place, I wash the part with a little carbolic soap (there are two
sorts--one for animals and a more refined preparation for the human
skin), and it is quite well the next day. We have all had a threatening
of those horrid boils, but they have passed off.
In town the mosquitoes are plentiful and lively, devoting their
attentions chiefly to new-comers, but up here--I write as though we were
five thousand feet instead of only fifty above Maritzburg--it is rare to
see one. I think "fillies" are more in our line, and that in spite of
every floor in the house being scrubbed daily with strong soda and
water. "Fillies," you must know, is our black groom's (Charlie's) way of
pronouncing _fleas_, and I find it ever so much prettier. Charlie and I
are having a daily discussion just now touching sundry moneys he
expended during my week's absence at D'Urban for the kittens' food.
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