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.
Our five months at Walmer passed so pleasantly, that in spite of my
longing to be settled on a place of our own, and the impatience I felt
to enter on all the duties and pleasures of farm life among the
ostriches, I was really sorry when the time of departure came, and in
the beginning of winter--_i.e._ towards the latter part of May--we left
the little house, the first home of our married life, and took our
journey up-country. We had no very long distance to travel, for the
farm in the Karroo district which T---- had chosen was only a day's
journey from "The Bay," as Port Elizabeth, like San Francisco, is
familiarly called; and instead of being, like many proprietors of
farms, quite out of the world, and obliged to drive for two or even
three days to reach the railway, we had our choice of two stations; the
nearest, Klipplaat, being only fifteen miles from us, and the railway
journey not more than eight hours.
Our farm, extending over twelve thousand acres, was situated in a long
valley running between two ranges of mountains, the steepness of which
rendered enclosing unnecessary in many parts; thus saving much expense
in starting the farm, an entirely new one, and chosen purposely by
T---- on this account. For it sometimes happens that land on which
ostriches have run for years becomes at last unhealthy for the birds.
We were in that part of the Karroo which is called the Zwart Ruggens,
or "black rugged country;" so named from the appearance it presents
when, during the frequent long droughts, the bush loses all its
verdure, and becomes outwardly so black and dry-looking that no one
unacquainted with this most curious kind of vegetation would suppose it
capable of containing the smallest amount of nutriment for ostriches,
sheep, or goats. But if you break one of these apparently dried-up
sticks, you find it all green and succulent inside, full of a very
nourishing saline juice; and thus, even in long droughts which
sometimes last more than a year, this country is able to support stock
in a most marvellous manner, of which, judging by outward appearance,
it certainly does not seem capable. It seems strange that in this land
of dryness the plants are so full of moisture; one wonders whence it
can possibly have come.
The little _karroo_ plant, from which the district takes its name, is
one of the best kinds of bush for ostriches, as well as for sheep and
goats; it grows in little compact round tufts not more than seven or
eight inches from the ground, and though so valuable to farmers, it is
but unpretending in appearance, with tiny, narrow leaves, and a little,
round, bright yellow flower, exactly resembling the centre of an
English daisy after its oracle has been consulted, and its last petal
pulled by some enquiring Marguérite.
The _fei-bosch_ is another of our commonest and most useful plants; its
pinkish-lilac flower is very like that of the portulacca, and its
little flat succulent leaves look like miniature prickly pear leaves
without the prickles; hence its name, from _Turk-fei_, Turkish fig.
When flowering in large masses, and seen at a little distance, the
fei-bosch might almost be taken for heather.
The _brack-bosch_, which completes our trio of very best kinds of
ostrich-bush, is a taller and more graceful plant than either of the
preceding, with blue-green leaves, and blossom consisting of a spike of
little greenish tufts; but there are an endless variety of other
plants, among which there is hardly one that is not good nourishing
food for the birds.
[Illustration: A. MARTIN, _Del_.
_Some of the Best Kinds of Ostrich-Bush._
1. BRACK-BOSCH. 2. GHANNA. 3. FEI-BOSCH.]
All are alike succulent and full of salt, giving out a crisp, crackling
sound as you walk over them; all have the same strange way of growing,
each plant a little isolated patch by itself, just as the tufts of wool
grow on the Hottentots' heads; and the flowers of nearly all are of the
portulacca type, some large, some small, some growing singly, others in
clusters; they are of different colours--white, yellow, orange, red,
pink, lilac, etc. They are very delicate and fragile flowers; and,
pretty as they are, it is useless to attempt carrying them home, for
they close up and fade as soon as they are gathered.
Indeed, nearly all the flowers in that part of the world are
unsatisfactory; and those few among them which will keep for a very
short time in water are almost useless for table decorations, as they
seem incapable of adapting themselves to any sort or form of
flower-vase. They are pretty enough in themselves; but the large,
thick, stubborn stems, all out of proportion with the flowers, refuse
to bend themselves to any graceful form or combination; they all seem
starting away from one another in an angular, uncomfortable manner, and
of course any pretty arrangement of flowers which _will_ not arrange
_themselves_ is impossible. Our thoughts often went back longingly to
the flowers of Walmer, compared with which prolific region the Karroo
is poverty indeed.
A cineraria, very nearly as large as the cultivated varieties, and of a
beautiful deep blue, on which the Dutch have bestowed the euphonious
name of _blaauw-blometje_ (little blue flower), several tiny irises,
and a rather rare bulb, the hyacinth-like blossoms of which, as well as
the upper part of the stalk, are of a lovely tint between scarlet and
deep rose-colour, and all soft and velvety in texture, are among our
prettiest flowers.
Then there are the mimosa's balls of soft, sweet-scented yellow fringe,
perfuming the air all round for a long distance, and making the trees
seem all of gold when covered with their masses of bloom. Here and
there is a Kaffir bean, a shrub with rather handsome large red flowers,
but it is not common. There are a good many colourless,
insignificant-looking flowers, and some which are quite uncanny; one,
especially, with pendent, succulent bells of livid green and dull red,
looks worthy to be one of the ingredients of a witch's cauldron. These
are all flowers of the plains; the mountains are richer, but their
treasures are only to be attained by making rather long excursions up
their steep sides, over the roughest and stoniest of ground, and
through a tangled mass of vegetation, most of which is very thorny. But
even the weariest climb is well repaid on reaching the heights where
the wild geraniums grow. The immense round bushes, five or six feet in
diameter, and brilliant with great bunches of pink or scarlet flowers,
are indeed a lovely sight. A creeping ivy-leaved geranium, and a very
pretty pelargonium, which is also a creeper, grow in these same far-off
regions; the flower of the latter is of a beautiful rich maroon and
cream-colour, its curiously jointed stem and tiny leaves are very
succulent, salt to the taste, and strongly scented with the sweet
geranium perfume. It is strange to notice how plants which in Europe
are neither saline nor particularly succulent, when growing in the
Karroo assume the prevailing character of its vegetation.
Large white _marguérites_, growing on a shrub with a hard, woody stem,
inhabit the same heights as the geraniums and pelargoniums; all these
together would have been invaluable for the brightening of our little
rooms, if we could possibly have brought them home. But they are all
much too delicate to survive the long walk or ride back, and the only
mountain flowers we could reasonably hope to bring home in a
presentable condition were the large, bright yellow _immortelles_. The
scanty little streams trickling down some of the cool shady _kloofs_
between the mountains are the home of a few white arums; and their
rocky beds are fringed, though not very abundantly, with maidenhair
fern.
The _spekboom_, which is a good-sized shrub, sometimes attaining the
height of fifteen or twenty feet, grows plentifully a little way up the
mountains; and in very protracted droughts, when the karroo and other
bush of the plains begin at last to fail, it is our great resource for
the ostriches, which then ascend for the purpose of feeding on it; and
though they do not care for it as they do for their usual kinds of
food, it is good and nourishing for them. Elephants are very fond of
the _spekboom_, but though a few of these animals are still found near
Port Elizabeth, there are fortunately none in our neighbourhood to make
inroads on the supplies reserved for the ostriches against what
certainly in South Africa cannot be called "a rainy day." The
_spekboom_ has a large soft stem, very thick, round, succulent leaves,
and its clusters of star-shaped, wax-like flowers are white, sometimes
slightly tinged with pink. There are several plants very closely
resembling the _spekboom_; one with pretty, bright yellow flowers; and
one, the soft stem of which, if cut into thin slices, looks exactly
like very red salt tongue.
Those unpleasant old acquaintances of childish days, the bitter aloes,
are at home in the Karroo in great numbers; and most brilliantly do
they light up the somewhat gloomy-looking sides of the mountains in
early spring with the great spikes of their shaded scarlet and
orange-coloured flowers, looking like gigantic "red-hot poker plants."
This African aloe has none of the slender grace of its American
relative, and it is only when flowering that it has any claim to
beauty; at all other times it is simply a most untidy-looking plant,
the thick, clumsy stem for about five or six feet below the crown of
leaves being covered with the ragged, decaying remains of former
vegetation, suggestive of numberless scorpions and centipedes.
Thorny plants abound, especially on the mountains, where indeed almost
every bush which is not soft and succulent is armed with strong, sharp,
often cruelly hooked spikes. The _wacht-een-beetje_ (wait-a-bit) does
not grow in our neighbourhood, but we have several plants which seem to
me no less deserving of the name; and often, when held a prisoner on
some ingenious arrangement of hooks and spikes viciously pointing in
every possible direction, each effort to free myself involving me more
deeply, and inflicting fresh damage on clothes and flesh, I should, but
for T----'s assurance to the contrary, have quite believed I had
encountered it. The constant repairing of frightful "trap-doors" and
yawning rents of all shapes and sizes in T----'s garments and in my
own, took up a large proportion of time; and often did I congratulate
myself on the fact that my riding-habit at least--chosen contrary to
the advice of friends at home, who all counselled coolness and
lightness above everything--was of such stout, strong cloth as to defy
most of the thorns. Any less substantial material would have been
reduced to ribbons in some of our rides.
On foot, you are perpetually assailed by the great strong hooks of the
wild asparagus, a troublesome enemy, whose long straggling branches
trailing over the ground are most destructive to the skirts of dresses;
while boots have deadly foes, not only in the shape of rough ground and
hard, sharp-pointed stones, but also in that of numerous prickly and
scratchy kinds of small bush. At the end of one walk in the _veldt_,
the surface of a kid boot is all rubbed and torn into little ragged
points, and is never again fit to be seen. Fortunately, in the Karroo,
no one is over-particular about such small details.
Among our troublesome plants, one of the worst and most plentiful is
the prickly pear; and farmers have indeed no reason to bless the old
Dutchwoman who, by simply bringing one leaf of it from Cape Town to
Graaff-Reinet, was the first introducer of what has become so great a
nuisance. It spreads with astonishing rapidity, and is so tenacious of
life that a leaf, or even a small portion of a leaf, if thrown on the
ground, strikes out roots almost immediately, and becomes the parent of
a fast-growing plant; and it is not without great trouble and expense
that farms can be kept comparatively free from it. Sometimes a little
party of Kaffirs would be encamped on some part of our land especially
overgrown with prickly pears; and there for months together they would
be at work, cutting in pieces and rooting out the intruders; piling the
disjointed stems and leaves in neatly-arranged stacks, where they would
soon ferment and decay. Labour being dear in the colony, the wages of
"prickly-pear-men" form a large item in the expenditure of a farm; in
many places indeed, where the plants are very numerous, it does not pay
to clear the land, which consequently becomes useless, many farms being
thus ruined.
Sometimes ostriches, with that equal disregard of their own health and
of their possessor's pocket for which they are famous, help themselves
to prickly pears, acquire a morbid taste for them, and go on indulging
in them, reckless of the long, stiff spikes on the leaves, with which
their poor heads and necks soon become so covered as to look like
pin-cushions stuck full of pins; and of the still more cruel, almost
invisible fruit-thorns which at last line the interior of their
throats, besides so injuring their eyes that they become perfectly
blind, and are unable to feed themselves.
Many a time has a poor unhappy ostrich, the victim of prickly pear,
been brought to me in a helpless, half-dead state, to be nursed and fed
at the house. Undaunted by previous experience, I perseveringly tended
each case, hoping it might prove the exception to the general rule, but
never were my care and devotion rewarded by the recovery of my patient.
There it would squat for a few days, the picture of misery; its long
neck lying along the ground in a limp, despondent manner, suggestive of
the attitudes of seasick geese and ducks on the first day of a voyage.
Two or three times a day I would feed it, forcing its unwilling bill
open with one hand, while with the other I posted large handfuls of
porridge, mealies, or chopped prickly pear leaves in the depths of its
capacious letter-box of a throat. All to no purpose; it had made up its
mind to die, as every ostrich does immediately illness or accident
befalls it, and most resolutely did it carry out its intention.
The prickly pear, mischievous though it is, is not altogether without
its good qualities. Its juicy fruit, though rather deficient in
flavour, is delightfully cool and refreshing in the dry heat of summer;
and a kind of treacle, by no means to be despised at those not
infrequent times when butter is either ruinous in price or quite
unattainable, is made from it. A strong, coarse spirit, equal to the
_aguardiente_ of Cuba in horrible taste and smell, is distilled from
prickly pears; and though to us it seemed only fit to be burned in a
spirit-lamp, when nothing better could be procured, it is nectar to the
Boers and Hottentots, who drink large quantities of it. Great caution
is needed in peeling the prickly pear, the proper way being to impale
the fruit on a fork or stick while you cut it open and remove the skin.
On no account must the latter be touched with the hands, or direful
consequences will ensue. To the inexperienced eye the prickly pear
looks innocent enough; with its smooth, shiny skin, suggestive only of
a juicy interior, and telling no tale of lurking mischief--yet each of
those soft-looking little tufts, with which at regular intervals it is
dotted, is a quiver filled with terrible, tiny, hairlike thorns, or
rather stings; and woe betide the fingers of the unwary "new chum,"
who, with no kind friend at hand to warn him, plucks the treacherous
fruit. He will carry a lively memento of it for many days.
My first sad experience of prickly pears was gained, not in South, but
in North Africa. Landing with a friend in Algiers some time ago, our
first walk led us to the fruit market, where, before a tempting pile of
_figues de Barbarie_, we stopped to quench the thirst of our thirty-six
hours' passage. The fruit was handed to us, politely peeled by the Arab
dealer; and thus, as we made our first acquaintance with its delightful
coolness, no suspicion of its evil qualities entered our minds. And
when, a few days later, adding the excitement of a little trespassing
to the more legitimate pleasures of a country ramble, we came upon a
well-laden group of prickly pear bushes, we could not resist the
temptation to help ourselves to some of the fruit--and woeful was the
result. Concentrated essence of stinging-nettle seemed all at once to
be assailing hands, lips, and tongue; and our skin, wherever it had
come in contact with the ill-natured fruit, was covered with a thick
crop of minute, bristly hairs, apparently growing from it, and
venomous and irritating to the last degree. Our silk gloves,
transformed suddenly into miniature robes of Nessus, had to be
thrown away, perfectly unwearable; and the inadvertent use of our
pocket-handkerchiefs, before we had fully realized the extent of our
misfortune, caused fresh agonies, in which nose as well as lips
participated. For many a day did the retribution of that theft haunt us
in the form of myriads of tiny stings. It was a long time indeed before
we were finally rid of the last of them; and we registered a vow that
whatever Algerian fruit we might dishonestly acquire in future, it
should not be _figues de Barbarie_.
In dry weather at the Cape these spiteful little stings do not even
wait for the newly-arrived victim; but fly about, light as
thistle-down, ready to settle on any one who has not learned by
experience to give the prickly pear bushes a wide berth.
The leaves of the prickly pear are good for ostriches and cattle,
though the work of burning off the thorns and cutting the leaves in
pieces is so tedious that it is only resorted to when other food
becomes scarce. One kind, the _kahlblad_, or "bald leaf," has no
thorns. It is comparatively rare, and farmers plant and cultivate it as
carefully as they exterminate its troublesome relative.
Another kind of cactus, which, if the beautiful forms in Nature were
utilized for artistic purposes half as much as they deserve to be,
would long since have been recognized as a most perfect model for a
graceful branched candlestick, is used as food for cattle during long
droughts, being burnt and cut up in the same manner as the prickly
pear. When the plant is in flower, each branch of the candlestick seems
tipped with a bright yellow flame.
Another of our many eccentric-looking plants, the _finger-poll_, is
also used in very dry seasons to feed cattle; the men who go about the
country cutting it up being followed by the animals, which are very
fond of it, but which, owing to its excessive toughness, are unable to
bite it off. It grows close to the ground; its perfect circle of thick,
short fingers, rather like gigantic asparagus, radiating stiffly from
the centre. How the cattle manage to eat it without serious
consequences has always been a matter of wonder to me, for the whole
plant is filled with a thick, white, milky juice, which when dry
becomes like the strongest india-rubber. We often used this juice for
mending china, articles of jewellery, and many things which defied
coaguline, to which, indeed, we found it superior.
One of our plants always reminded me of those French sweets, threaded
on a stiff straw, which often form a part of the contents of a bon-bon
box. The thick, succulent leaves, shaded green and red, with a frosted,
sparkling surface which increases the resemblance to the candied
sweets, and all as exactly alike in shape and size as if made in one
mould, are threaded like beads at equal distances along the stem, which
passes through a little round hole in the very centre of each. They can
all be taken off and threaded on again just as they were before.
Close to the ground, and growing from a little round root apparently
belonging to the bulbous tribe, you sometimes--though only rarely--see
a tiny mass of soft, curling fibres, delicate and unsubstantial-looking
as a little green cloud. Even the foliage of asparagus would look
coarse and heavy if placed beside this really ethereal little plant,
which yet is durable, for I have now with me a specimen which, though
gathered five years ago, is still quite unchanged.
The wild tobacco is a common--indeed too common--plant in the Karroo;
it has clusters of long, narrow, trumpet-shaped flowers, of a light
yellow, its leaves are small, and it resembles the cultivated tobacco
neither in appearance nor in usefulness. Indeed it is one of our worst
enemies, being poisonous to ostriches, which of course--true to their
character--lose no opportunity of eating it. We made deadly war upon
it, and whenever during our rides about the farm we came upon a clump
of its blue-green bushes, we would make up a little bonfire at the foot
of each, and burn it down to the ground. But it is tenacious of life,
and its roots go down deep, so its career of evil was only cut short
for a time. Besides which, our efforts to keep it under were of little
avail while our neighbours, "letting things slide," in true colonial
fashion, allowed the plants to run wild on their own land; from whence
the seeds were always liable to be washed down to us during "a big
rain," when the deep _sluits_ which everywhere intersect the country
become, in a few hours, raging torrents, dashing along at express
speed.
Strangely enough, when T----, some years ago, was travelling in
Australia, to which country he had brought some ostriches from the
Cape, he found that wild tobacco grew nowhere throughout the length and
breadth of the land, excepting just in the very region in which the
birds had been established. During that trip he also found that the
"salt-bush" of Australia, which is there considered the best kind of
food for sheep, is almost identical with the brack-bosch of the Cape
Colony, the only difference being that it grows higher. We have also
seen the same bush growing in Algeria, and near Marseilles.
On the lower slopes of some of our mountains grow tall euphorbias,
shooting up straight and stiff as if made of metal, and branching out
in the exact form of the Jewish candlestick sculptured on the arch of
Titus in Rome. Some of these euphorbias attain the height of forty
feet--quite important dimensions in that comparatively treeless land.
They impart an air of melancholy and desolation to the landscape; and
look particularly weird and uncanny when, on a homeward ride, you pass
through a grove of them at dusk.
One more queer plant in conclusion of these slight and very
unscientific reminiscences of our flora, which I trust may never meet
the eye of any botanist. The _kerzbosch_, or candle-bush, a stunted,
thorny plant, if lighted at one end when in the green state, will burn
steadily just like a wax candle, and is used as a torch for burning off
the thorns of prickly pear, etc.