Home Life on an Ostrich Farm

CHAPTER I.. Port Elizabeth and Walmer.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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_).

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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