KARROO BEASTS, BIRDS AND REPTILES.
Leopard drowned in a 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.
Although the elephant and lion are now no longer found in the Karroo,
there still remain a good number of leopards, or, as the colonists, in
calm defiance of natural history, persist in calling them, "tigers."
These animals, by the way, seem fated at both ends of the Dark
Continent to be the victims of a misnomer, and in Algeria rejoice in
the name of _panthère_. Though the South African leopards are now
following the example of the larger and more formidable game, and
gradually retreating before the advance of man, it is not many years
since three or four of them might be seen drinking together at night
from the dam close to the Dutch house now transformed into the
homestead of Swaylands. Even now, in the hills overlooking the Karroo,
there are more of them about than the farmer likes; and sheep, calves,
colts and young ostriches are occasionally killed by them.
One day, riding up to a well in an out-of-the-way part of the farm, we
found that a magnificent full-grown leopard had fallen in and drowned
himself. There he was, floating on the surface of the water only five
feet below where we stood; his large body extended across the whole
diameter of the well, and on the steep but rough and unbricked sides of
the latter we could see the traces of his desperate though unavailing
struggles to climb out. Unfortunately, the weather being very hot, his
beautiful skin was already spoilt; and we rode home regretting the
lovely rug "off our own farm," which we might have displayed to
admiring friends at home if we had but found him one day earlier.
A wounded leopard is a very dangerous customer. One of our neighbours,
an old hunter, bears many scars in remembrance of severe injuries
received long ago in following up one of these animals which he had
shot. The encounter was a terrible one, nearly costing the colonist his
life.
Next to the leopard in ferocity comes the baboon. He is a big,
deep-voiced, sturdy fellow; his short, gruff bark is as dog-like as his
head, and there is no doubt that he is identical with the dog-headed
ape of ancient Egypt. Indeed, all the sacred animals and birds of
Egyptian mythology, and many of the other creatures which are depicted
in so life-like a manner on the walls of Nile temples and tombs, are
to be found at this day in South Africa. Anubis the jackal; the
grey ibis, now extinct in Egypt, but common enough in the Cape
Colony, and--audacious insult to that learned god to whom he was
sacred--irreverently and absurdly named by the colonials "oddida;" the
hawk Horus, with just the same plump little body, round baby-face, and
delicately-tinted plumage of softest French grey and white which you
see again and again in those comical, toy-like little wooden images in
the museum at Cairo; the wild geese, with the identical curious
markings of those which, in the oldest picture in the world, may be
seen in that same museum; the scarab, rolling his unwieldy ball with
Atlas-like efforts;--all these are at home on the Karroo farms.
Cynocephalus, indeed, was very much more at home at Swaylands than we
liked, and would often frighten the ostriches into a wild state of
panic, with the usual inevitable result of broken legs. On mountain
excursions you frequently hear his surly bark, and sometimes see him
looking out defiantly at you from behind rock or bush, where possibly
you have disturbed him in the midst of an exciting lizard-hunt, or
careful investigation of loose stones in search of the centipedes,
scorpions and beetles hidden beneath. These creatures, uninviting
though they appear to us, are among his favourite dainties, and he
catches them with wonderful dexterity. In the silence of night his
voice is so distinctly audible from the homestead that you would
imagine him to be close by, though in reality he is far off in one of
the kloofs of the mountains. One night, as we strolled up and down near
the house, enjoying the bright moonlight, a loud chorus of distant
baboons to which we were listening was suddenly interrupted, evidently
by the spring of a hungry leopard, the moment's silence being followed
by the agonized and prolonged yells of the victim.
Now and then Cynocephalus, or, as the Boers ironically call him,
"Adonis," gets too troublesome, and war has to be carried into his
camp. Of no avail against him are those neat little strychnine pills,
enclosed in tempting pieces of fat, by means of which Anubis is so
successfully sent to his account. No vegetable poison has the slightest
effect on the baboon's iron constitution, and indeed, if there exists
any poison at all capable of killing him, it is quite certain that with
his superior intelligence he would be far too artful to take it; and
when the fiat for his destruction has gone forth a well-organized
attack has to be made on him with dogs and guns. He can show fight,
too, and the dogs must be well trained and have the safety of numbers
to enable them to face him; for in fighting he has the immense
advantage of hands, with which he seizes a dog and holds him fast while
he inflicts a fatal bite through the loins. Indeed, for either dog or
man, coming to close quarters with Adonis is no trifling matter.
One of our friends, travelling on horseback, came upon a number of
baboons sitting in solemn parliament on some rocks. He cantered towards
them, anticipating the fun of seeing the ungainly beasts take to their
heels in grotesque panic; but was somewhat taken aback on finding
that--far from being intimidated by his approach--they refused to move,
and sat waiting for him, regarding him the while with ominous calmness.
The canter subsided into a trot, and the trot into a sedate walk--and
still they sat there; and so defiant was the expression on each ugly
face that at last the intruder thought it wisest to turn back and ride
ignominiously away.
A Dutch boy--one of a family temporarily camping in their own waggon on
the farm, and employed by T----, rambling one day in one of the far-off
kloofs of the mountains, came near the haunt of a party of baboons.
Though an occasional bark broke the stillness, only one of the animals
was in sight, and that a little one, probably left alone for a while
during the mother's search for food. With the baby baboon in his arms
the boy was soon speeding at his best pace down the mountain; and, if
fortune had but favoured his enterprise as it deserved, what a
delightful "new chum" would that day have been added to our collection
of animals! But too soon the whole troop of baboons, missing their
youngest hope, were in full pursuit of the robber, on whom they gained
so rapidly, and with gestures so unmistakeably portending mischief,
that young Piet was only too glad to drop his prize and run for his
life.
The baboon stands in no awe of women; he seems quite aware of their
inferiority, in point of strength and courage, to the sterner sex, and
despises them accordingly. At one place near Graaff-Reinet the women
never dared to go and fetch water unless accompanied by men; for the
baboons, which were very numerous, would always chase and threaten any
daughter of Eve who ventured, without masculine escort, near their
haunts.
Baboons captured in babyhood and brought up in human society are
capable of becoming extremely tame. Like all other very intelligent
animals, they vary much in disposition, a docile and tractable one soon
learning to perform many clever tricks, and being an amusing companion,
though too often a mischievous one. A gentleman at Willowmore owned two
large, splendidly-trained performing baboons, which would have made the
fortune of any circus-proprietor. They would together enact a series of
complicated tricks, each going through his allotted part without a
mistake. Both were most attentive and obedient to orders, and never by
any chance would "Joe" so far forget his duty as to respond to the
command given to "Jim," or vice versa.
Occasionally, too, Adonis--who cannot, even by his best friends, be
called ornamental--is taught to make himself useful; he has in several
instances been seen filling the post of _voorlooper_ to the waggons
of travelling Boers, acquitting himself on the whole quite as creditably
as his Hottentot fellow-servants. And at one railway station in the
colony a baboon was for a long time employed to work the points. The
man in charge of the latter--having in a railway accident lost one
arm and part of the remaining hand--had taught the ape to move the
levers. This he did most cleverly with three of his powerful hands,
using one of the hinder ones; and the fact of the novel pointsman
retaining his situation makes it evident that his duties were
satisfactorily performed.
On the occasion of a raid with dogs and guns on the baboons infesting a
friend's farm, one of the animals killed was the mother of a very young
infant. When the captors came up to the spot they found the poor little
creature crying piteously as it clasped the trunk of the tree beneath
which lay its dead parent. They took it home, and our friend, a great
lover of animals, was successful in rearing it. "Sarah," a gentle,
amiable character, soon became a great favourite, and her comical ways
were a source of constant amusement to her human friends. At the word
of command she would stand erect, with her arms behind her, and her
mouth wide open to catch the pieces of potato, etc., which were thrown
into it; and when told to open "wider! wider!" she would distend her
jaws almost to the point of breaking.
Of course she was occasionally--what member of the ape tribe is
not?--the victim of practical jokes. One day her favourite dish,
pumpkin, was presented to her, and, all-unconscious of the treachery
which lurked within, she applied herself with gusto to her dinner,
which, unlike most of her tribe, she always preferred to eat direct
from the dish without the intervention of her fingers. Alas! between
two of those succulent slices of pumpkin cruel hands had spread a thick
layer of mustard; and poor Sarah, eating greedily, soon experienced
direful results on tongue, palate, throat, and eyes. She knew at once
that she had been tricked; and never were contempt and indignation
better expressed than by the lordly manner in which she kicked away the
dish with all its remaining contents. After which she retired, much
offended, to her bed, from whence she did not emerge for a long time.
On another occasion poor Sarah was made the subject of a still more
unkind practical joke. She dearly loved sweets, which were often given
to her wrapped up in a multitude of papers, one inside the other. It
was amusing to watch the patient and deliberate manner in which she
would unfold each paper in turn, taking the greatest care never to tear
one, and proceeding with all the caution of a good Mohammedan fearful
of inadvertently injuring a portion of the Koran. This time, instead of
the expected tit-bit, a dead night-adder was wrapped up and presented.
When she unfolded the innermost paper, and the snake slipped out, with
a horrid writhe, across her hand, Sarah quietly sank backwards and
fainted away, her lips turning perfectly white. By dint of throwing
water over her, chafing her hands, and bathing her lips with brandy,
she was revived from her swoon, though not without some difficulty.
Sarah has now been for a long time the inmate of an English country
rectory, where, let us hope, no unfeeling jokes at her expense embitter
her declining years.
Of a far less docile disposition than Sarah was a large baboon kept by
T---- at the Diamond Fields. The incessant damage wrought by this
creature among his master's property and that of neighbours, and the
frequent doctors' bills of which he was the occasion, made him rather
an expensive pet. He was kept chained up, but would now and then break
loose, on which occasions he never failed to make an excellent use of
his opportunities and enjoy as good a "time" as possible before Nemesis
overtook him in the form of recapture and well-deserved chastisement.
One day, for instance, T----, on returning to his tent, was
considerably surprised to find his bed occupied by Mr. Adonis, who,
after getting into the shower-bath, pulling the string, and receiving
the consequent ducking, had retired in a drenched and dripping
condition to the blankets, within which he had comfortably ensconced
himself, and from whence he gazed impudently at his master. He no doubt
thought that he had well earned the luxuries of bath and bed by his
busy morning's work among the contents of T----'s canvas house; and
indeed that once cosy little abode now offered to the owner's eye a
very good representation of chaos on a small scale. A bottle of acid,
in which were a number of diamonds, had been thrown outside and the
contents scattered in the sand; T----'s watch had been pulled to pieces
and flung through the window; and altogether every conceivable piece of
mischief had been done. On attempting to secure and tie up the
offender, T---- received a severe bite through the leg; on which,
naturally irate, he seized his gun, and capital punishment would then
and there have been inflicted but for the discovery that the wily
Adonis had balked retributive justice by carefully pulling every
cartridge to pieces.
Among the numerous vices of this baboon was an incorrigible addiction
to stimulants; and after indulging in his favourite drink--gin and
ginger-beer--he might very profitably have been displayed on the
platform of a temperance lecturer, as the Spartans exhibited their
helots, in illustration of the evils of drunkenness. The manner in
which, after a drop too much, he invariably persisted in walking
upright was unpleasantly suggestive of drunken humanity; so too was his
urgent need of soda-water to allay the parched condition of his mouth
on the following morning. He would draw the cork with his strong teeth,
holding the bottle close to his lips, and taking the greatest care to
lose none of the refreshing gas.
He could throw stones with the unerring aim of a schoolboy; and, being
of a revengeful disposition, and possessed of a wonderful memory, he
never failed to requite any insult or injury received. Once a Zulu
offended him by striking him with a stick. A long time passed, and then
one day the man, who had quite forgotten all about it, came within
reach of the baboon's tether, and--blissfully ignorant of the vengeful
feelings lurking in the breast of the quadrumane--offered him something
to eat. But Adonis, who had not forgotten, and who was only too glad to
pay off old scores, caught the man by the hand, and, drawing him
towards him, bit and punished him severely.
Here is another tale of revenge, in which the poor ape played but a
passive part in the hands of the "superior" animal. A colonist, having
killed a baboon, and owing several of his neighbours a long-standing
grudge, bethought him of a truly fiendish manner of revenging himself.
Though it is unlikely that he had ever read of Tantalus, he proceeded
somewhat after that classical example, and, cutting up the baboon,
made him into a stew, in which savoury disguise he served him up as
the _pièce de résistance_ at a dinner to which all the obnoxious
neighbours were bidden. The dish proved a delicious one, and all the
visitors ate of Pelops Cynocephalus with great relish. The tableau may
be imagined when, at the end of the banquet, the host told his guests
what they had eaten.
It must require considerable hardness of heart to kill a baboon; for
the creature is so horribly and uncannily human-looking, and, when
wounded, cries in a pathetic manner which must appeal to all but the
most callous of consciences. A hunter once told T---- that he felt like
a murderer after shooting one of them, and seeing how in its dying
agonies it pressed one finger upon the hole made by the bullet; crying
like a child as it fixed its eyes on him with piteous looks of
reproach.
Although the miniature Zoo at Swaylands never boasted of a tame
cynocephalus, we numbered among our feathered friends one of the gods
of ancient Egypt in the shape of as tiny and chubby a little Horus as
ever sat for his portrait to the sculptors of Philæ or Thebes. He was
but a wee thing, about the size of a wild dove, but possessed an amount
of intelligence which made him one of the most interesting even among
Cape pets. Sad to say, the poor little fellow was minus one wing.
T----, noticing him one day flying near the house, and not knowing what
bird he was, brought him down with a small rifle bullet. The shot
passed through the wing, so completely smashing it that the only thing
we could do was to take it off close to the body. We tied it up at once
and stopped the bleeding, the plucky little patient never uttering a
sound, though his jewel-like eyes seemed really to blaze with anger.
They were the most wonderful eyes imaginable, almost owl-like in size
and roundness, and of a lovely red with an orange tinge. A ruby with a
candle behind it is what I imagine would come nearest to them in
colour. The plumage of Horus, instead of being speckled and barred with
different shades of brown like that of the falcons one is accustomed to
see, was of the loveliest silver-grey, darkest on the back and wing,
and shading off gradually into very pale grey on the head, and into
purest white on the breast and beneath the body; the breast feathers
being soft and fluffy, like eider-down. The legs and feet were bright
yellow, the bill dark grey, edged with yellow, and a circle of dark
feathers round the eyes, drawn off into a long line at each side, gave
a sphinx-like appearance to the wise-looking little head. Altogether,
Horus was one of the most beautiful little birds we have seen. We took
it for granted that he was the sacred falcon; and it will be a
disappointment to us if, one day, some learned ornithologist tells us
we were quite wrong.
The little fellow recovered rapidly; and, although on the first day
after the amputation we had to put food down his throat, getting
viciously punished by his needle-pointed bill and claws, on the second
he took meat from our hands, eating voraciously as much as we would
give him, and even coming after us for more; though, not having yet
learned to steer himself under his altered circumstances, he hobbled in
a very clumsy and crab-like fashion, now and then making futile efforts
to fly, and tumbling down on his side. Soon, however, he learned to
walk straight, and would follow us about like a little dog, with the
quaintest short steps. He was soon tame and friendly with all but the
meerkat, for which he showed great animosity, and on which he would
jump spitefully--or perhaps hungrily?--whenever it came near him.
Possibly, in a wild state, small animals of this kind were his natural
prey. He did not object to Toto, who indeed--with the sole exception of
his rival and arch-enemy Bobby--has never failed to get on well with
all his heterogeneous companions.
Horus, debarred by his infirmity from active exercise, and condemned to
a somewhat humdrum life, sought consolation in the pleasures of the
table, and developed an enormous appetite. He shared the spoils of the
mousetraps with Bobby, and would take raw and cooked meat from our
hands with equal relish. Indeed I am afraid we overfed him, and induced
apoplexy. At any rate, one evening as we sat reading after dinner, he
dropped quietly from his perch, and died without a flutter.
The aasvogel, a repulsively ugly, bald-headed, bare-necked bird of the
most pronounced vulture type, is very common in South Africa,
especially in the regions where game is most plentiful. These denizens
of the air seem to be perpetually hovering, on the watch for prey, at
such immense heights as to be quite out of range of human vision;
though their own keen sight enables them instantly to detect the
prospect of a feed, and if an animal is killed, or even only wounded,
they are at once aware of the fact, and, swooping down from their airy
height, sail straight to the spot.
Perhaps you are a "new chum" out hunting, and you bring down an
antelope. Although, at the moment of firing your shot, you would have
been ready to take your affidavit that--
"No birds were flying overhead,
There were no birds to fly,"--
your game has hardly fallen before, far up in the grey-blue, a tiny
speck appears, at first only just visible, but rapidly increasing in
size; then another, and yet another floats into sight, "and still they
come," till at last the heavens seem all alive with birds approaching
from every direction, outlined against the cloudless sky in different
degrees of size and clearness, according to perspective, but all making
the straightest of bee-lines towards the wounded animal. In the Free
State, where these birds are very numerous, T----, hunting on
horseback, has sometimes found that before he could reach the spot
where his antelope had fallen the aasvogels were already on it, and had
commenced operations by plucking out the eyes, their special tit-bits.
These nastiest of birds think nothing of overeating themselves till
their condition resembles that of Mark Twain's jumping frog after the
famous dose of shot, and, when gorged after a good "square" meal, they
are so heavy that they have to run a long way before they can rise into
the air. On these occasions, if you are active and have a good long
whip, you can catch them by switching the lash round their ugly, bare
necks. But a little experience teaches you that this sport has its
drawbacks, as the aasvogel invariably swarms with animal life of the
most objectionable kind.
Owls are plentiful enough in the Karroo; so too are those other
nocturnal birds, the goat-suckers, which at sundown begin to fly about,
uttering their weird, plaintive cry. They are queer-looking birds, and
seem all out of proportion, with a broad, short head and immensely wide
bill, surrounded by stiff bristles like a cat's whiskers. On examining
a specimen shot near our house, we were amused to find that, by looking
into this preposterous bill, we could distinctly see the creature's
eyes through the semi-transparent roof of the mouth.
Another of our feathered eccentricities, the butcher-bird, called by
the colonists Jack Hanger, likes to eat his game high; and you often
come across mimosa-bushes which, stuck all over with small birds,
beetles, locusts, etc., impaled on the long, stiff thorns, form his
well-stocked larder.
In such a land of snakes as South Africa it is necessary for the birds
to resort to many clever and thoughtful devices for the protection of
eggs and young; and some of the "homes without hands" are most
ingeniously planned and exquisitely constructed.
The golden oriole hangs her graceful nest on the very furthest end of a
long bough--over water, if possible, for extra safety,--and always
gives the preference to the drooping branches of the willow. The nest
is shaped just like a Florence flask with the end curved over; and it
is next to impossible for a snake to penetrate into its interior.
Even prettier and more wonderfully made is the nest of the kapok bird,
a little creature resembling a tom-tit. The material used in the
construction of this small domicile is a kind of wild cotton, well
named by the Boers _kapok_ (snow). The nest, which is very compact, and
looks as if it were made of soft, white felt, is of much the same shape
as the oriole's brown flask; but near the outlet it is dented in,
forming a kind of second or exterior nest, in which the little
paterfamilias mounts guard over his household gods, effectually closing
the aperture by the pressure of his back against the curving end of the
tube above him. The white felt is very thick and firm throughout the
globular part of the flask, but gradually diminishes in density along
the neck, till at the orifice it is so thin and loosely woven that the
soft edges, pressed together by the bird, remain interlaced even after
he has flown from his sentry-box. No apparent aperture is left; and the
little stronghold is quite impregnable, and ready to baffle the wiliest
of ophidian marauders, until Mrs. Kapok, by flying out, re-opens the
tunnel.
Snakes are indeed one of the greatest drawbacks to South African life.
There are so many of them, they are of such deadly sorts, and the
obtrusive familiarity and utter absence of ceremony with which they
come into the houses render the nerves of newly-arrived inmates liable
at any moment to receive a severe shock. After a time, of course,
finding that every one you meet has some startling experiences to
relate, of the discovery of intrusive snakes in all sorts of places
where they were most unlooked-for and least desirable, you become
somewhat inured to this unpleasant feature of colonial existence, and
move about your house with the caution of one who would not be
surprised to find a snake anywhere.
T----, dressing one morning during the early days of his Cape life, had
just inserted his foot at one end of his trousers, when a
night-adder--a most deadly little snake, with an evil habit of going
about at hours when all respectable reptiles are in bed--dropped out at
the other. One of our neighbours considerably damaged his drawing-room
by firing several shots at a large cobra, which had startled his wife
by paying an unwelcome call. Another friend, exploring the depths of
her rather dark china-closet, put her hand on a snake, comfortably
coiled up beside the teacups. And a ghastly tale we heard, of some one
in bed, putting his hand under the pillow at night for his
pocket-handkerchief, and pulling out a puff-adder, makes one feel
that--for those at least who live at the Cape--there is more of common
sense than of irony in Mark Twain's assertion that it is safest not to
go to bed.
We were more fortunate than our neighbours, and never during our four
years' residence did I find in any of our rooms that snake for
which--as the old lady for the burglar--I was continually looking.
Perhaps we owed our immunity to the narrow strips of horse-hair
material, with the rough edge pointing upwards, which T----, having
read somewhere that no snake will cross this prickly barrier, had
nailed along the threshold of each outer door. In the store, which did
not communicate with the house, and the door of which was fortified by
no friendly spikes, we did occasionally kill a snake--attracted, no
doubt, by the legions of fat mice which ran riot among the sacks. The
fowl-house, too, would often be thrown into a state of wild excitement
and frenzied cackling by the visits of these dreaded reptiles--most
inveterate of egg-stealers.
One day, soon after we came up-country, Nancy suddenly burst in upon
us, her red turban all awry, and her speech so incoherent with
agitation that the only intelligible words were "Missis! _Turkey!!_
Missis! _Snake!!!_" On running out, we found the whole poultry-yard in
commotion, and the hens clamouring as if each had laid at least a dozen
eggs; while our nine turkeys stood drawn up in a row, pictures of
imbecile consternation, chattering feebly as they, one and all, made a
dead point at a little empty packing-case, protruding from behind which
we could just see the ugly, broad head of a young puff-adder. The enemy
was soon despatched; and while the turkeys recovered their
equanimity--which process took a long time--I indulged in the pleasure
so dear to any one with a taste for natural history, and took a
thorough survey of this, the first good-sized puff-adder I had seen.
And what a repulsive creature it was, with its short, thick,
swollen-looking body, toad-like head, and utterly evil countenance!
Only the hideous cerastes, with little demon-like horns--so common in
North Africa--comes anywhere near a puff-adder in thorough-paced
villainy of expression.
Of all the Cape snakes the puff-adder is not only the deadliest, but by
far the most to be feared. For, being of the same colour as the ground,
it is extremely difficult to see: it is lazy, too, and will not take
the trouble to get out of your way as every other snake does; yet, when
roused, it is very active, and comes at you backwards, springing a long
distance with accurate aim. If you are in front of it you are safe, as
it cannot strike forward. One morning, T----, lifting up the rug in
which he had been sleeping out on the veldt, found the flattened body
of a puff-adder, which had evidently crept between the folds for
warmth, and which he had unconsciously crushed to death.
Cobras, some of which are quite six feet in length, are very numerous
in the Karroo. At certain seasons this snake is very aggressive, and
will come at you boldly if you happen to be between it and its nest.
T----, when out shooting one day with a pointer, suddenly saw a cobra
lift itself up and strike the dog. The venom was so swift in its
operation that the poor animal only turned round once, and died almost
immediately.
The _schaapsticker_, which always reminded me of the beautiful but
deadly coral-snakes of South America, has a wonderfully-marked skin,
the pretty pattern and bright tints of which might well be utilized by
some artistic designer of floor-cloths. A delicate, coral-like red
predominates among the colours; and altogether the creature is so small
and pretty that it is difficult to believe it is one of the most
venomous of snakes. It is particularly destructive to cattle and sheep,
hence its name, the literal translation of which is "sheep-stinger."
Some of the tree-snakes, too, are very beautiful; and, many of them
being of the same bright green as the foliage, a close look is required
to distinguish them as they lurk beneath it on the watch for birds, or
for little mice which sometimes climb up into bushes, or into the lower
branches of trees.
Lizards are very plentiful throughout the Karroo; and, as you walk
through the veldt, hundreds of them, startled by your footsteps, dart
away in all directions from one isolated tuft of bush to another, as
if running for their little lives. In strong contrast to these
bright, active creatures of the sunshine are the slow-moving,
pallid-complexioned house-lizards which are so unpleasantly common.
There are few things uglier than one of these _hikés_. With his flat,
round toes, serving the purpose of suckers whereby he is enabled to
retain his foothold as he perches, fly-like, on the ceilings, his
low, criminal type of face, brightened by none of the quaint,
antediluvian air of wisdom which redeems the chameleon's honest
ugliness, and with his general unhealthy and uncanny appearance, it
is no wonder that among the ignorant natives he has the reputation of
being as venomous as he looks, and that from one end of the country
to the other he is more dreaded than any snake. Yet it is somewhat
puzzling to think how he can inflict a poisonous bite, when, on
looking into his mouth, you perceive that he has no teeth.
An object of even more superstitious dread is that mysterious and
deadly creature--half-quadruped, half-reptile, and certainly altogether
fabulous--the so-called dassie-adder. Throughout the whole country
you hear accounts of this strange animal from Boers, Kaffirs, and
Hottentots; many of the coloured race declare that they have seen it,
and, though some laugh at the tale, the belief in it is evidently
very general. The anterior portion of the mythical creature's body
is supposed to be that of a dassie, or rock-rabbit (the coney of
Scripture), to which are joined, in somewhat mermaid-like fashion, the
thick body and blunt tail of a snake resembling a puff-adder. According
to all accounts the dassie-adder, whose bite is instantly fatal, is
most vindictive, and, running with all the swiftness of a dassie, will
chase any one who comes near it. Some say, too, that it goes about at
night.
The dassies, so terrible in their fictitious semi-reptile state, are in
real life very harmless, timid little animals. They are gregarious, and
live among the rocks in such inaccessible places that it is most
difficult to capture one of them; and a tame dassie is among the rarest
of Karroo pets, so securely do these "feeble folk" make "their houses
in the rocks." In appearance the dassie is very like a little brown
guinea-pig; as regards intelligence, too, he is just about the equal of
his rather uninteresting piebald cousins, and, although he is as
pretty, soft-coated and gentle as you could wish, and in his mild,
placid way gets very tame, he is nowhere in comparison with that prince
of pets, a meerkat.
A not unlikely solution of the dassie-adder mystery seems to be that in
all probability the puff-adders prey upon the little denizens of the
rocks; and a large snake may occasionally have been seen with a
half-swallowed dassie in his mouth, just as a common snake sometimes
displays, protruding from his jaws, the head and forelegs of the
inconveniently fat frog which he is unable to gulp down in a hurry. The
negro mind is quite capable of evolving a fabulous animal out of even
such slight grounds as this.
Of "creepy-crawlies" of all kinds the Karroo possesses more than
enough, and--like the snakes--they invade the house, and make
themselves at home in a manner which is free and easy rather than
pleasant. Legions of venomous centipedes, scorpions, and big,
bristly-legged spiders of the tarantula tribe lurk in the old reed
ceilings; from whence they drop playfully down now and then, to the
consternation of the unwary inmate sitting beneath, on whose head or
book they chance to land. Or, if they do not drop down on you, they lie
in wait about the room in well-chosen points of vantage, where their
sudden discovery is sure to give you a horrid jump, even if you are
lucky enough to get off without a venomous bite or sting.
One evening, as I was getting ready for bed--oblivious for once of
cautious habits acquired, years before, in that land of "jiggers," the
West Indies, where you never venture to walk slipperless, even across
your bedroom--my bare foot suddenly encountered what seemed like the
point of a red-hot needle sticking straight up out of the floor; and,
looking down, I found that I had trodden on a scorpion. Fortunately, it
was not one of the large black ones, which are the most venomous, but
only a light-coloured specimen, about two inches and a half in length.
It was, however, quite bad enough; and although T---- recklessly poured
away over the foot our whole photographic supply of ammonia, and made
me drink the greater part of a bottle of strong Cape wine in the hope
of neutralizing the poison--though, alas! only producing other and sad
results--it was many hours before that red-hot needle showed any signs
of cooling down. And then an exaggerated form of "pins and needles" set
in, followed by what resembled a succession of powerful electric shocks
running up the leg at intervals of two or three minutes. Altogether,
the victim of a scorpion's sting can well realize the feelings of gouty
patients, who dread to see even their best friends coming within five
or six yards of them. It was two days before I could put my foot to the
ground; and then, for several more, I could only hobble painfully with
the aid of a stick.
Colonial boys are fond of setting scorpions to fight with tarantulas.
The great spiders are most pugnacious, and seem only too glad of an
opportunity to fight with anything. T---- once watched one of them in
desperate battle with a centipede. The vicious spider, whose body was
as large as that of a mouse, seized his antagonist and shook him
savagely, just as a terrier shakes a rat; then, letting him go for a
time, he would spring upon him, pick him up, and worry him again,
apparently with fiendish pleasure. He continued this mode of warfare
until the final collapse of the poor centipede, whose pluck in facing
such an adversary at all deserves to be commended.
Prominent among insect nuisances are ants of many different sorts and
sizes, the worst of all being the mischievous rice ants. Many a carpet
or curtain is utterly ruined by these creatures, which have a trick of
coming up unexpectedly through the floor in large numbers, generally
during the night, when they can carry on their destructive work without
interruption. They work with a zeal worthy of a better cause, and the
amount of damage their powerful jaws can do in one night is almost
incredible.
Very pretty necklaces are made of the threaded eggs of one kind of ant.
They are rough and irregular in shape, and possess such a soft lustre,
that--but for their deep golden colour--they might almost be taken for
inferior pearls.
It is some satisfaction to know that the ranks of Cape ants are
considerably thinned by several inveterate enemies. One of these is
that strange burrowing animal the ant-bear, called by the Dutch
_aardvaark_ (earth-pig).[7] There is one in the Zoo; and it is about as
uncanny and nightmare-like a beast as could be imagined or dreamed
of--a sort of crazy combination of calf and pig, reminding one of the
Mock Turtle in "Alice's Adventures." Like that tearful animal, it
possesses a head and body which do not in the smallest degree appear to
belong to each other. The longest, narrowest and boniest of calves'
heads, so pallid and sickly in complexion, and so entirely hairless, as
to appear not only dead, but neatly scraped and cleaned all ready for
cooking, is joined--without the intervention of any neck to speak
of--to a fat, pig-like body, very scantily clothed with short, bristly
hairs. The eyes are large and dark, the bare, pink ears are of
rabbit-like proportions, and the calf's head terminates in a pig's
snout, thickly lined with hair. This latter is the only hirsute
adornment possessed by the goblin-like countenance, to which a very
cynical expression is given by the animal's ugly trick of wrinkling up
its enormously long snout. The thick legs, and the feet, armed with
large claws, are immensely strong; so, too, is the broad, flat, almost
hairless tail, about the shape of which there is something unpleasantly
suggestive of a puff-adder. The specimen in the Zoo has a damaged tail,
the result of the force the captors found it necessary to use in
dragging it from its hole. A riem was once tied to the tail of an
ant-bear, and a span of oxen fastened on to draw it out of the ground.
But, after much ineffectual tugging, the experiment ended in the
breaking of the riem--or of the tail--our informant had forgotten
which; at any rate the animal remained in its hole.
[7] _Orycteropus capensis._
Many a time does the unwary rider, cantering across the veldt, come to
sudden grief in one of the deep, trap-like holes made by the ant-bear,
which seems by no means an uncommon animal. But it is quite possible to
live many years in South Africa, and, however often you may tumble into
its holes, never once see the creature itself. For, being of nocturnal
habits, it is active only at night, when it tunnels its way underground
like a mole, occasionally coming to the surface, and now and then
emerging in very unexpected places.
Some members of a hunting-party, camping out for the night, were much
surprised to see the ground heave up suddenly in the centre of their
tent, the passing of an ant-bear a little below the surface being the
cause of the miniature earthquake. And during the war in Zululand an
Irish sentry was on guard at midnight, when suddenly, close to him, the
ground opened, and out of it rose a ghastly living Jack-in-the-box. The
moonbeams shone full on the horrid form, long head, and deadly-pale,
calf-like face; and the man--small blame to him--dropped his gun,
deserted his post, and fled in horror, shouting to his astonished
comrades the awful news that he had seen Old Nick himself! And indeed,
if, on one of our moonlight strolls about the farm, an ant-bear had
suddenly risen in our path, I am quite sure that we should have taken
to our heels with equal alacrity.
The cage of the Cape ant-bear at the Zoo being next to that of the
American ant-eater, a good opportunity is afforded for observing the
marked dissimilarity of the two animals, which indeed could hardly be
more unlike each other. One of the numerous points in which they differ
is that the American ant-eater is toothless, while the _aardvaark_
possesses teeth.
The ant-lion, so often pictured in books of natural history, is common
in the Karroo; and it was a great pleasure for us when, for the first
time, we saw him in real life, and examined his cleverly-constructed,
funnel-shaped trap, hollowed out in the soft, sliding sand,--down which
his victims tumble, to find him waiting open-mouthed at the bottom.
Talking of the ant-lion reminds one of another excavator, still more
familiar to Cape colonists, the trap-door spider. His "diggings" are in
the form of a perpendicular, cylinder-shaped box, the lid of which,
level with the surface of the ground, is so neatly made that it is
quite impossible to detect it when closed.
The walking-leaf tribe is very largely represented in South Africa; and
besides simulating leaves of many different kinds, the creatures assume
numerous other forms, some looking just like pieces of dried stick,
others like bits of straw, blades of grass, etc. The plant, or portion
of a plant, which they personate so admirably, is always the chosen
resting-place on which they sit, motionless and meditative, often
defying detection. The praying mantis is worshipped by the Hottentots,
who perhaps, like the ancient Greeks and Romans, look on him as a kind
of soothsayer or fortune-teller ([Greek: mantis]). But in spite of
being the Hottentot god, and of possessing such a pious-sounding
scientific name as _Mantis religiosa_, he is a most pugnacious little
beast; and if he has a difficulty to settle with one of his brethren,
the pair will fight it out like the Kilkenny cats.
Not long ago, at a North African picnic, one of these same little
creatures caused much amusement by the tact which he displayed in doing
just the right thing at the right time, and in the prettiest manner. It
was a very hot day, so close and oppressive that we all felt rather
languid; and conversation flagged as we sat at luncheon round the
table-cloth spread on the ground in the interior of a large tent.
Suddenly, during a long pause, a little mantis appeared on the scene.
With a jaunty air, and with all the cool self-possession of a popular
performer advancing, confident of success, towards the footlights, he
stepped on to the tablecloth, and, crossing it in a bee-line, drew up
before Her Britannic Majesty's Consul, to whom, with many jerky
inclinations of his gaunt, bright-green body, he made what appeared to
be a series of most obsequious bows. Then, having obeyed the first
requirements of etiquette, he passed slowly along the line of guests,
halting occasionally and paying his respects to one or the other. He
seemed quite unabashed by all the notice and applause which he
received; and as the plate in which he finally deposited himself was
handed round among the guests, he calmly surveyed each one in turn,
while continuing, very literally, to "bow and scrape." If he had been a
paid performer, engaged beforehand, he could not have played his little
part better; and all agreed in giving him a vote of thanks for his
timely appearance, which just gave us the mental pick-me-up which, on
that enervating day, we all needed. I believe some one carried him home
at last in a paper cage; though whether he fulfilled the brilliant
promise of his first introduction to human society, and became an
intelligent pet, we never heard.