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HOME LIFE
ON AN OSTRICH FARM.
[Illustration: TROOP OF OSTRICHES, AND CART WITH PRICKLY-PEAR
LEAVES FOR FOOD.]
HOME LIFE ON AN OSTRICH FARM
By
ANNIE MARTIN
_WITH TEN ILLUSTRATIONS_
NEW YORK
D. APPLETON AND COMPANY
1891
_Authorized Edition._
To T. M.
IN REMEMBRANCE OF OUR SOUTH AFRICAN LIFE.
PREFACE.
Some portions of the chapters on "Ostriches" and "Bobby" have already
appeared, in an abridged form, in the Saturday _Review_. Part of the
chapter on "The Climate of the Karroo" has also appeared in the _St.
James's Gazette_.
By the kind permission of the editors of both papers I am now enabled
to reprint these pages.
A. M.
CONTENTS.
PAGE
CHAPTER I.
PORT ELIZABETH AND WALMER.
Early ambitions realized--Voyage to South Africa--Cape Town
and Wynberg--Profusion of flowers--Port Elizabeth--Christmas
decorations--Public library--Malays--Walmer--Hottentot huts--Our
little house--Pretty gardens--Honey-suckers--Flowers of Walmer
Common--Wax-creeper--Ixias--Scarlet heath--Natal lilies--
"Upholstery flower"--Ticks--Commence ostrich-farming--Counting
the birds--A ride after an ostrich 9
CHAPTER II.
SOME OF OUR PETS.
Friendliness of South African birds and beasts--Our secretary
bird--Ungainly appearance of Jacob--His queer ways--Tragic fate of
a kitten--A persecuted fowl--Our Dikkops--A baby buffalo--Wounded
buffalo more dangerous than lion--A lucky stumble--Hunter attacked
by "rogue" buffalo--A midnight ride--Followed by a lion--Toto--A
pugnacious goose--South African climate dangerous to imported
dogs--Toto and the crows--Animals offered by Moors in exchange
for Toto 25
CHAPTER III.
PLANTS OF THE KARROO.
We move up-country--Situation of farm--Strange vegetation of
Karroo district--Karroo plant--Fei-bosch--Brack-bosch--Our
flowers--Spekboom--Bitter aloes--Thorny plants--Wacht-een-Beetje
--Ostriches killed by prickly pear--Finger-poll--Wild tobacco
fatal to ostriches--Carelessness of colonists--Euphorbias--
Candle-bush 46
CHAPTER IV.
OUR LITTLE HOME.
Building operations--A plucking--Ugliness of Cape houses--Our
rooms--Fountain in sitting-room a failure--Drowned pets--
Decoration of rooms--Colonist must be Jack-of-all-trades--Cape
waggons--Shooting expeditions--Strange tale told by Boer 61
CHAPTER V.
CLIMATE OF THE KARROO.
Cape Colony much abused--Healthy climate--Wonderful cures of
consumption--Karroo a good place for sanatorium--Rarity of illness
and accidents--The young colonist--An independent infant--Long
droughts--Hot winds--Dust storms--Dams--Advantage of possessing
good wells--Partiality of thunderstorms--Delights of a brack
roof--Washed out of bed--After the rain--Our horses--Effects of
rain indoors--_Opslaag_--The Cape winter--What to wear on Karroo
farms 72
CHAPTER VI.
OSTRICHES.
An unwilling ride--First sight of an ostrich farm--Ridiculous
mistakes about ostriches--Decreased value of birds and feathers
--Chicks--Plumage of ostriches--A frightened ostrich--The
plucking-box--Sorting feathers--Voice of the ostrich--Savage
birds--"Not afraid of a dicky-bird!"--Quelling an ostrich--Birds
killed by men in self-defence--Nests--An undutiful hen--Darby and
Joan--A disconsolate widower--A hen-pecked husband--Too much
zeal--Jackie--Cooling the eggs--The white-necked crow--Poisoning
jackals--Ostrich eggs in the kitchen--A quaint old writer on
ostriches--A suppliant bird--Nest destroyed by enraged ostrich--An
old bachelor 98
CHAPTER VII.
OSTRICHES (_continued_).
Vagaries of an incubator--Hatching the chicks--A bad egg--Human
foster mothers--Chicks difficult to rear--"Yellow-liver"--Cruel
boys--Chicks herded by hen ostrich--Visit to Boer's house--A
carriage full of ostriches--"The melancholy Jaques"--Ostriches at
sea--A stampede--Runaway birds--Branding--Stupidity of ostriches
--Accidents--Waltzing and fighting--Ostrich soup--An expensive
quince--A feathered Tantalus--Strange things swallowed by ostriches
--A court-martial--The ostrich, or the diamond?--A visit to the
Zoo 130
CHAPTER VIII.
MEERKATS.
Meerkats plentiful in the Karroo--Their appearance--Intelligence--
Fearlessness--Friendship for dogs--A meerkat in England--Meerkat an
inveterate thief--An owl in Tangier--Taming full-grown meerkat--
Tiny twins--A sad accident--Different characters of meerkats--The
turkey-herd--Bob and the meerkat--"The Mouse" 157
CHAPTER IX.
BOBBY.
Bobby's babyhood--Insatiable appetite--Variety of noises made by
Bobby--His tameness--Narrow escape from drowning--A warlike
head-gear--Bobby the worse for drink--His love of mischief--He
disarms his master--Meerkat persecuted by Bobby--Bobby takes to
dishonest ways--He becomes a prisoner--His clever tricks--Death
of Bobby 170
CHAPTER X.
OUR SERVANTS.
A retrospective vision--Phillis in her domain--Her destructiveness
--Her ideas on personal adornment--The woes of a mistress--
Eye-service--Abrupt departure of Phillis--Left in the lurch--Nancy
and her successors--Cure of sham sickness--The thief's dose--Our
ostrich-herd--A bride purchased with cows--English and natives at
the Cape--Character of Zulus and Kaffirs 182
CHAPTER XI.
HOW WE FARED.
Angora goats--Difficulty of keeping meat--The plague of flies--
Rations--Our store--Barter--Fowls--Chasing a dinner--Fowls
difficult to rear--Secretary birds as guardians of the poultry-yard
--Jacob in the Karroo--He comes down in the world--He dies--
Antelopes--A springbok hunt--The Queen's birthday in the
Karroo--Colonial dances--Our klipspringer--Superstition about
hares--Game birds--_Paauw_--_Knorhaan_--Namaqua partridges--
Porcupines--A short-lived pet--Indian corn--Stamped mealies--
Whole-meal bread--Plant used for making bread rise--Substitutes
for butter--_Priembesjes_--A useful tree--Wild honey--The
honey-bird--Enemies of bees--Moth in bees' nests--Good coffee
--Sour milk 203
CHAPTER XII.
KARROO BEASTS, BIRDS AND REPTILES.
Leopard drowned in well--Baboons--Egyptian sacred animals on Cape
farms--"Adonis"--A humiliating retreat--A baby baboon--Clever
tricks performed by baboons--Adonis as a _Voorlooper_--A
four-handed pointsman--Sarah--A baboon at the Diamond Fields--
Adonis's shower-bath--His love of stimulants--His revengeful
disposition--Pelops the dog-headed--Horus--_Aasvogels_--
Goat-sucker--The butcher-bird's larder--Nest of the golden oriole
--The kapok-bird--Snakes in houses--A puff-adder under a pillow
--Puff-adder most dangerous of Cape snakes--Cobras--_Schaapsticker_
--Ugly house-lizards--Dassie-adder--The dassie the coney of
Scripture--Stung by a scorpion--Fight between tarantula and
centipede--Destructive ants--The _Aardvaark_, or ant-bear--
Ignominious flight of a sentry--Ant-lion--Walking-leaves--The
Hottentot god--A mantis at a picnic 237
CHAPTER XIII.
OUR NEIGHBOURS.
Hospitality of Cape colonists--Cheating and jealousy in business
--Comfortless homes--Spoilt children--Education--The "Schoolmaster"
--Convent schools--A priest-ridden nation--The _Nachtmaal_--
Old French names--A South African duke in Paris--Fine-looking
men--Fat women--Ignorance of _Vrouws_--Boers unfriendly to
English--A mean man 266
CHAPTER XIV.
GOOD-BYE.
Recalled to England--Regrets and farewells--Cape horses lacking in
intelligence--"Old Martin"--A chapter of accidents--A horse "after
Velasquez"--The Spy's revenge--Virtues and faults of Cape horses--
Horse-sickness--Good-bye to Swaylands--Kaffir crane--The voyage
home--Dogs in durance--St. Helena--A visit to Longwood--Home
again 277
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.
I. Troop of Ostriches and Cart, with Prickly-Pear Leaves for
food _Frontispiece._
II. 1. Jacob. 2. Toto _Facing page_ 26
III. Some of the best kinds of Ostrich-bush:--
1. Brack-bosch.
2. Ghanna.
3. Fei-bosch. " 48
IV. Our Sitting-room " 66
V. Ostriches in a Hot Wind " 80
VI. Ostrich-chicks " 104
VII. 1. Ostrich-chick (Photographed from case in Stanley
and African Exhibition)
2. Ostriches meditating Escape through defective
fence " 150
VIII. A Meerkat " 158
HOME LIFE ON AN OSTRICH FARM.
CHAPTER I.
PORT ELIZABETH AND WALMER.
Early ambitions realized--Voyage to South Africa--Cape Town and
Wynberg--Profusion of flowers--Port Elizabeth--Christmas decorations
--Public library--Malays--Walmer--Hottentot huts--Our little house--
Pretty gardens--Honey-suckers--Flowers of Walmer Common--Wax-creeper
--Ixias--Scarlet heath--Natal lilies--"Upholstery flower"--Ticks--
Commence ostrich-farming--Counting the birds--A ride after an ostrich.
In the year 1881, leaving our native land wrapped in the cold fogs of
November, my husband and I started for South Africa; where it was the
intention of the former to resume the occupation of ostrich-farming,
engaged in which he had already spent many years in the Cape Colony. It
was my first visit to South Africa, and I was looking forward with
great pleasure to the realization of a very early wish; for the
adventures of settlers in far-off lands had always from childhood been
my favourite reading, and I had become firmly convinced that a colonial
life would suit me better than any other. Nor have I been disappointed;
but, looking back now on our life in South Africa, I can truthfully say
that, though certainly lacking in adventure, it has--unlike many things
long wished for and attained at last--in no way fallen short of my
expectations.
The few hours we spent at Madeira were unfortunately during the night;
and the beautiful island I was so longing to see remained hidden from
view in a most tantalizing manner, without even the moonlight to give
us some faint outline of its far-famed loveliness.
After a safe, but most uneventful voyage, enlivened by no more stirring
incidents than the occasional breaking down of the engines, we at last
looked up at the glories of Table Mountain, and came suddenly into
summer; enjoying the flowers and bright sunshine of Cape Town all the
more after the dreary weather we had left in England. We landed, and
spent a few very pleasant days at the pretty suburb of Wynberg, from
whence we took several beautiful drives. On one occasion we left the
carriage, and walked over such a carpet of lovely and bright-coloured
wild flowers as I have only once seen equalled, when riding some years
before through Palestine and Syria. At the end of five minutes we
stopped, and counted all the different sorts we had gathered, finding
twenty-eight.
Another day we collected a number of leaves of the silver tree, which
is found only on Table Mountain. The long, pointed leaves seem made of
the glossiest pale-grey satin; you can write and paint on their soft
surface, and numbers of them are for sale in the Cape Town shops,
adorned with highly-coloured pictures of Table Mountain, steamers going
at full speed, groups of flowers, Christmas good wishes, etc. We
preferred, however, when enclosing the leaves in our letters home, to
send them in all their native beauty, and with no clumsy human attempts
at improvement.
The beautiful plumbago is one of the most common plants, and many of
the hedges about Wynberg consist entirely of it; the masses of its
delicate blue-grey flowers forming as graceful a setting for the
pretty, neatly-kept gardens as can well be imagined.
We were quite sorry when the time came for going back to our steamer,
Port Elizabeth being our destination. We landed there a few days
before Christmas; and, soon after our arrival, walked out to Walmer
to call on friends, whom we found busily engaged in decorating the
little church. Their materials consisted simply of magnificent blue
water-lilies--evidently the sacred blue lotus of the ancient Egyptians,
with the sculptured representations of which they are identical--and
large, pure white arums, or, as the colonists unromantically call them,
"pig-lilies;" both being among the commonest of wild flowers about
Walmer. These, with a few large fern-fronds, and the arum's own glossy
leaves, formed the loveliest Christmas decoration I have ever seen.
There is not much to see in Port Elizabeth; indeed, it is rather uglier
than the generality of colonial towns, built simply for business, and
with no thought of the picturesque--and what few attempts at ornament
have been made are rather disfiguring than otherwise. On a bare hill
above the town there is a conspicuous monument, the builders of which
appear to have been long undecided as to whether it should be a small
pyramid or large obelisk; the result being an ugly compromise between
the two. Another work of art, more nearly approaching the obelisk form,
but equally far from the Egyptian model both in its shape and in the
designs which decorate it, stands in the market-place, in front of the
town hall. This latter was by far the best-looking building in Port
Elizabeth, until, a few years ago, its appearance was completely spoilt
by the addition of an ugly and ponderous clock-tower, quite out of
proportion to the rest of the structure, which it seems threatening to
crush with its overpowering size and weight. The interior of the town
hall, however, compensates for its outward deficiencies; for it
contains a most excellent public library, plentifully supplied with
books of all kinds, newspapers, and magazines, in two comfortable and
well-arranged rooms. It would be well indeed if England would take a
lesson from the Cape Colony in this respect; for in all the smaller
towns which we visited, _i.e._, Cradock, Graaff-Reinet, Uitenhage,
etc., we found good public libraries. There is a good club in Port
Elizabeth, and several hotels, all of which we have tried at different
times, finding the Standard (Main Street), though small and of
unpretending exterior, by far the most comfortable. A little way out of
the town there is a very good botanical garden, with a large
conservatory, containing many beautiful palms, tree-ferns, and other
tropical plants.
The Malays are the most picturesque feature of Port Elizabeth; and
their bright-coloured Eastern dresses, and the monotonous chant of the
priest announcing the hours of prayer from the minaret of the mosque,
form a pleasing contrast to the surrounding everyday sights and sounds.
Like most other Orientals, they are perfect artists in their
appreciation of colour; and, fortunately, they are still old-fashioned
enough not yet to have adopted the hideous coal-tar dyes with which
Europe has demoralized the taste of some of their brethren in Cairo and
Algiers. On Fridays, when all are wearing their best, you often see the
most beautiful materials, and the loveliest combinations of colour;
especially in the flowing robes of the priests, the tints of which
always harmonize perfectly. Thus, for instance, you will see an outer
garment of turquoise blue, worn over an inner one of "old gold;"
delicate salmon colour over soft creamy white; rich orange in
combination with the deepest maroon; with an infinite variety of other
lovely tints, any of which a painter might covet for his studio. The
Malays often wear as turbans some of the beautiful _sarongs_ of Java,
which are simply ordinary calico, painted by hand with a few good
colours, and in the most artistic designs; of course there are never
two alike, and in these days of machine-made sameness they are
refreshing to behold. Some of the men wear immense hats, made of palm
leaves very firmly and solidly plaited, and tapering to a point; they
are made to fit the head by means of a small crown fixed inside, very
like that of a college cap.
The Malay women, instead of gliding about veiled to the eyes, like
their Mohammedan sisters in other parts of the world, wear the quaint
costume which was the fashion among the Dutch women at the time when
the Malay race first came as slaves to the Cape. The waist of the dress
is extremely short; and the long and voluminous skirts, of which an
infinite number seem to be worn, commence close under the arms,
spreading out, stiffly starched and spotlessly clean, to dimensions
rivalling those of the old hooped petticoats. The good-natured brown
faces are most unbecomingly framed by bright-coloured silk
handkerchiefs tightly bound under the chin, somewhat after the fashion
of the Algerian Jewesses--giving the wearers an appearance of perpetual
toothache. Many of the women wear noisy wooden clogs; kept from parting
company with the bare feet by nothing but a kind of large button,
curiously ornamented, projecting between the two first toes.
In the early days of slavery, when the Malays were brought up in the
Dutch families, nearly all were Christians; and even so recently as
when Sir Bartle Frere was governor there were comparatively few among
them who could read the Koran. During the last few years, however,
Mohammedanism has been rapidly gaining ground everywhere--the great
university of El Azhar in Cairo, especially, training thousands of
students to go out as emissaries into all parts of the East to make
converts--and the Malays, in constantly increasing numbers, are
embracing the creed of Islam. Many of them now save up their money for
the pilgrimage to Mecca, which is their great ambition. They are very
ignorant; and their Mohammedan fatalism, prejudicing them against all
sanitary precautions--especially vaccination--adds very much to the
difficulty of contending with small-pox and other epidemics when they
appear. In 1882, when there was so severe an outbreak of small-pox in
Cape Town and other parts of the colony, the Malays not only opposed
all attempts made by the authorities to isolate cases, but did all in
their power to spread the disease; many of them being found throwing
infected clothing into houses.
After staying about a week in the town, we went out to live at Walmer,
which is by far the pleasantest part of all the surroundings of Port
Elizabeth, and which deserves to be more generally chosen as a
residence by the wealthier inhabitants. It stands high, in a most
healthy situation, and full in the path of that rough but benevolent
south-east wind, which, owing to its kindly property of sweeping away
the germs of disease, is called "the Cape doctor." Away beyond Walmer
stretch miles of undulating common, covered with short bush and
numberless varieties of wild flowers; and a breezy walk across part of
this same common leads to Port Elizabeth. The walk is rather a long
one; and often, before the arrival of our little "spider" from America,
it would have been a comfort, after a long day in town, to avail
ourselves of one of the numerous hired carriages for the return
journey, were not the drivers of these vehicles so exorbitant in their
charges as almost to rival those of New York. They demand ten shillings
for the drive to Walmer, taking the passenger only one way; and this
too often in a vehicle so near the last stage of dilapidation as to
suggest fears of the final collapse occurring on the road. The
importunity of the drivers is most troublesome; and when, in spite of
their efforts, you remain obdurate, and they fail to secure you as a
"fare," they do their best to run over you, hoping no doubt that they
may thus at least have a chance of driving you to the hospital. Their
cab-stand, where, like a row of vultures, they sit waiting for their
prey, is on the market-place; and as you cross the latter, bound for
the reading-room, with ears deaf to their shouts, and eyes resolutely
fixed on the door of the town hall, leaving no doubt as to your
intention _not_ to take a drive, the whole rank move forward in a
simultaneous charge; pursuing and surrounding you with artful strategic
movements and demoniac cries, and with so evident an intention to knock
you down if possible, that when at last you stand safe on the town hall
steps, you realize the feelings of Tam O'Shanter on gaining "the
keystane of the brig."
On the common, about half-way between Port Elizabeth and Walmer, there
is a little group of Hottentot huts, shaped like large bee-hives, and
made of the strangest building-material I ever saw, _i.e._, a thick
mass of the oldest and filthiest rags imaginable. How they hold
together has always been a mystery to me; for they flap and flutter
ominously in the almost incessant wind, and seem threatening to wing
their way across the common and invade the verandahs and gardens of
Walmer. Although I have ventured into a good many queer human
habitations in different parts of the world, I have never felt inclined
to explore the interior of one of these huts, which look as forbidding
as their ugly, yellow-skinned inmates. There is no window, no proper
outlet for smoke, no room for any one of average figure to stand
upright, and the hole which serves as a door is much too low for any
more dignified entrance than on all fours--an attitude which, though
quite worth while when threading the passages of the Great Pyramid,
would hardly be repaid by the sight of the Hottentot in his home; and
by the possible acquaintance of creeping, crawling and hopping legions.
Numbers of dirty, monkey-like children, and ugly, aggressive dogs of
the pariah type, swarm round these huts; the dogs often taking the
trouble to pursue the passer-by a long distance on his way, irritating
his horse and himself by their clamour, and always keeping just out of
reach of the whip.
With the exception of the few remaining Bushmen, the Hottentots are the
ugliest and most degraded of all the South African natives. The Kaffirs
are much pleasanter to look at, some of the young girls being rather
nice-looking, with graceful figures, on which blankets of a beautiful
artistic terra-cotta colour are draped in folds worthy of an Arab
_burnous_. Occasionally some of the red ochre with which the blankets
are coloured is daubed over the face and head, the effect being rather
startling. The slender, bronze-like arms are often completely hidden
from wrist to elbow by a long spirally-twisted brass wire, looking like
a succession of the thinnest bangles quite close together.
We found a comfortable little furnished house at Walmer, in which we
spent the first five months after our arrival. It was just a convenient
size for our small party, consisting, besides my husband and myself, of
our two English servants, and Toto, a beautiful collie. The rooms were
all on the ground floor; shaded, and indeed almost darkened, by a broad
verandah running the whole length of the front. This absence of
sufficient light in nearly all colonial houses strikes the new-comer
unpleasantly; but one gets used to it, and in the heat and strong glare
of the Cape summer the darkened rooms are restful and comforting. At
one end of our verandah we made a little fernery, which we kept green
and bright with trophies brought home from some of our longer walks and
rides--also an aviary, the little inhabitants of which kept up a
constant chorus, always pleasant to hear, and never loud enough to be
troublesome. The Cape canary is a greenish bird, with a very pretty
soft note, quite different from the piercing screech of his terrible
yellow brother in English homes. Another soft-voiced little singer is
the _rooibeck_, or red-beak, a wee thing very like an avadavat; a few
goldfinches completed our collection, and all were very tame and happy
in their little home. The broad leaves of two fine banana-plants shaded
birds and ferns from the sun, which otherwise would have beaten in on
them too fiercely through the window of the verandah. A banana-plant is
a delightful thing to cultivate; it grows so rapidly, and is so full of
health and strength; and the unfolding of each magnificent leaf is a
new pleasure.
We were within a short walk of our friends' house; and during the
frequent absences of T----, my husband, often away for several weeks at
a time while searching in different parts of the country for a suitable
farm, it was very pleasant for me to have kind neighbours so near, and
a bright welcome always awaiting me. Their garden was a large and
beautiful one, and its luxuriance of lovely flowers, roses especially,
gave ample evidence of their mistress's own care and love for them.
Nearly all the houses in Walmer have good gardens, enclosed by the
prettiest of hedges, sometimes of pomegranate, plumbago, or passion
flowers, but most often of tall American aloes, round the sweet flowers
of which the pretty honey-suckers--magnified humming-birds, substantial
instead of insect-like--are continually hovering, their jewelled
dresses of green, red, and yellow flashing in the sun at every turn of
their rapid flight. Close under the hedge, and shaded by the aloe's
blue-green spikes, the white arums grow in the thickest profusion. No
dining-table in Walmer need be without a simple and beautiful
decoration, for if there is no time for a ramble in search of flowers
on the surrounding common, you need only run out and pick a few arums
from the nearest hedge or small stream; and a few of them go a long
way.
But the treasures of the common are endless; and first and loveliest
among them all is the little "wax-creeper,"[1] than which, tiny as it
is, I do not think a more perfect flower could be imagined. It is as
modest as a little violet; and you have to seek it out in its
hiding-places under the thick foliage of the bushes, round the stems of
which it twines so tightly that it is a work of some time to
disentangle it. You also get many scratches during the process, for it
loves to choose as its protectors the most prickly plants; but when at
last you hold the delicate wreath in your hands, and look into its
minute beauties--the graceful curves of the slender stalk and tendrils,
no two of which ever grow alike; the long, narrow, dark-green leaves;
and the clusters of brilliant, carmine-tinted flowers, each like a
tiny, exquisitely-shaped vase cut out in glistening wax--you are amply
rewarded. It is indeed one of the masterpieces of nature, and the first
sight of it was a pleasure I can never forget.
[1] _Microloma lineare._
This little flower does not bear transplanting. We often tried to
domesticate it in our garden, but the plants invariably died. It was
quite the rarest of all our flowers. We have never seen it anywhere but
about Walmer, and there it grows only in small patches; five or six
plants close together, and then perhaps no more of them to be seen
during the whole of a long walk.
Another of our favourites was the _aantblom_, a kind of ixia, whose
lovely flowers range through all possible shades of rose-colour and
orange, from the deepest to the palest tints of pink and yellow, down
to the purest white. A large bouquet of nothing but these delicate,
fragile-looking blossoms, each one of a different shade, brought to us
by some little neighbours soon after our arrival, was a delightful
surprise. So also was the first finding of the sweet Cape jessamine
growing wild; but this is one of the rarer plants.
Then there is the scarlet heath; its cluster of large, velvet-like
flowers so vivid in colouring as to look like a flame of fire when the
sun comes glancing through it. It is the most beautiful of all the Cape
heaths, numerous and lovely as they are--though a delicately-shaded
pink and white one comes very near it in beauty. The blue lobelias grow
profusely all over the common; they are much larger and finer than
those in English gardens, and are of the deepest ultra-marine, only a
few here and there being a very pretty pale blue. Occasionally--but
this is very rare--you find a pure white lobelia. Another flower of
our home gardens, the gazania, is very plentiful, the ground being
everywhere studded with its large, bright orange-coloured stars.
Pink and white _immortelles_, gladioli, ixias, and irises of all kinds
abound; some of the latter are tiny specimens, yet they are pencilled
with all the same delicate lines as the larger sorts, though on so
small a scale that you almost need a magnifying glass to enable you to
see all their beauties. Then there are the Natal lilies, growing in
large round clusters, each in itself sufficient to fill a flower-vase;
you have but to break a thick, succulent stem, and a perfect,
ready-made bouquet of pink, sweet-scented flowers is in your hand.
Some of the plants about Walmer are more curious than beautiful; one
especially--which, not knowing its real name,[2] we called "the
upholstery flower"--is like an enormous tassel of red or pink fringe,
gaudily ornamented outside with a stiff pattern in green and brown. It
is about seven or eight inches long, solid and heavy in proportion; and
looks as if in the fitness of things it ought to be at the end of a
thick red and green cord looping up the gorgeous curtains of an
American hotel. The flower is shaped like a gigantic thistle, but the
plant on which it grows is a shrub, with a hard, woody stem, and
laurel-like leaves. These are only a few specimens of the common's
wealth of flowers; each time we went out we brought home a different
collection, and our little rooms were bright with that intensity of
colouring which makes the great difference between these children of
the sun and the flora of colder climates.
[2] We have since found that this plant is a _Protea_.
A search for flowers on the common, or, indeed, a walk anywhere about
Walmer, is attended by one very unpleasant penalty--you invariably come
home covered with ticks. There are several varieties of these
tormentors; the tiny, almost invisible ones being by far the worst and
most numerous, and their bites, or rather their presence beneath one's
skin, causing intense irritation. The large ticks, though they do not
confine their attentions wholly to animals, are much more troublesome
to them than to the human race, and our poor horses, dog, and other
creatures suffered terribly from their attacks. One day, soon after our
arrival, I was much amused by the clumsy antics of a number of fowls,
which were continually jumping up and pecking at some cattle grazing
near. On investigation, I found that they were regaling on the fat
ticks with which the poor animals were covered; and our appetite for
the Walmer poultry was considerably lessened by the discovery. Ticks
abound everywhere along the coast, but as soon as you move inland you
are free from the torment.
We had not been very long in Walmer before T---- commenced his
ostrich-farming with the purchase of forty-nine young birds, most of
them only a few months old, and all wearing the rough, black and grey
plumage which, under the name of "chicken-feathers," forms the
ostrich's clothing during the first three or four years of his life. We
kept them at night in a small enclosure near the house, and during the
daytime they grazed on the common, herded by a troublesome little
Kaffir boy, who required more looking after than all his charges. The
business of counting the latter when they were brought home in the
evening was by no means so easy as one would imagine, for the tiresome
birds did all in their power to hinder it, and if quiet enough before,
seemed always prompted by some mischievous demon to begin moving about
as soon as the counting commenced; then, just when we were about half
"through"--to use a convenient Americanism--they would get so
hopelessly mixed up that we had to begin all over again.
One day T---- and I had the excitement of an ostrich-hunt on horseback.
One of our birds, which was much larger than any of the others, being
nearly full-grown, and which had to be kept separate lest he should
ill-treat his weaker brethren, had got away, and we had a long ride
after him; T---- following him up by his _spoor_, or footprints, with
as unerring an eye as that of a Red Indian, until at last we were
rewarded by the sight of a small head and long snake-like neck above
the distant bushes. Then came the very enjoyable but somewhat difficult
work of driving our prisoner home. He would trot before us quietly
enough for a while, with his curious springy step, till he thought we
were off our guard, when he would make an abrupt and unexpected run in
the wrong direction; and a prompt rush, like that of the _picador_ in a
bull-fight, was necessary to cut off his retreat. The horses quite
understood what they had to do, and seemed to enter into the spirit of
it, and enjoy it as we did.