Home Life on an Ostrich Farm — A Closer Reading

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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.