It is always amusing, for those who have tried housekeeping in South Africa, to hear people in England talk of their "bad" servants. Ladies—who, after the short quarter of an hour devoted to interviewing the cook and giving the day's orders, need trouble themselves no more throughout the twenty-four hours as to the carrying out of those orders, but are free to pursue their own occupations, uninterrupted by a constant need of superintending those of their domestics,—sit in their beautifully-kept drawing-rooms or at their well-appointed dining-tables,—whose spotless linen and bright glass and silver are so delicious a novelty to eyes long accustomed to the Karroo's rough-and-ready backwoods style,—and, much to your surprise, complain bitterly of the unsatisfactory parlour-maid, or are pathetic over the iniquities of the cook who has just sent up a faultless little dinner. When any one, thus blissfully unconscious of what a really bad servant is, appeals to the lady colonist for sympathy, the unfeeling reply of the latter not unfrequently is: "You should try South African servants!" And instantly, before the mind's eye of that lady colonist, there arises a retrospective vision of the average "coloured help" of Cape farms; that yellow Hottentot or dark-skinned Kaffir, attired in a scanty and ragged cotton dress; her woolly head surmounted by a battered and not always over-clean kappje (sun-bonnet), or tied up in a red and yellow handkerchief of the loudest pattern, twisted into an ugly little tight turban. She stands, in the bright morning sunshine, against a background of dirty dishes and uncleaned saucepans, left neglected since last evening's meal; and of the comfort and advantage to herself of cleaning which before the adhering remnants of contents have dried and hardened it is absolutely impossible to convince her. Dogs, fowls, turkeys, and little pigs, in company with all the pet animals of the family and an occasional young ostrich, are kindly acting the part of scavengers on her unswept kitchen floor; where they are habitués, her wastefulness and untidiness affording them so good a living that they have grown bold, and, refusing to get out of your way, get under your feet and trip you up at every turn if you are rash enough to enter the dirty domain of their protectress. The latter, like some malevolent goddess, is surrounded by an atmosphere of most evil-smelling fumes, prominent among which is the paraffin with which, to save herself trouble, she liberally feeds the fire every time it becomes low; while the dense smoke and steam arising from several pots and saucepans on the stove proclaim the contents to be in various stages of burning,—the climax being reached by what was once the soup, but of which nothing now remains but a few dried and charred fragments of bone, tightly adhering to an utterly ruined pot—new last week. In answer to all expostulation the doer of the mischief has no word of regret or apology, but, taking the occurrence as a matter of course, shows all her even white teeth in a bright, good-tempered smile, as she says, "Yes, missis, de soup is burnt."

Then still more horrible whiffs assail you, viz., the combined odours of the various articles of food which she has put away, carefully covered up in jars and tins, where she has forgotten them; and where, in the close atmosphere of her stuffy kitchen, with the thermometer at 100°, they have promptly gone bad. She has no "nose"; and, though her kitchen may be pervaded with odours which knock you down, she remains smiling and contented, and needs to be informed of the fact that there is a bad smell before she will set to work—with great surprise—to hunt out the cause of it; too often revealing sights which make you shudder.

If it is anywhere near a meal-time, her fire is sure to be very low, if not out altogether; she has, of course, forgotten to tell the men, before starting for the camps in the morning, to chop wood for her day's needs; and as they, like all the coloured race, never perform the most every-day duty unless specially reminded, she has to do this work herself, with much difficulty and dawdling; the luncheon or dinner being accordingly delayed indefinitely. If, on the contrary, it is between meals, and no cooking will be required for several hours, there is a roaring fire, over the hottest part of which the chances are ten to one that you will find the empty kettle; while you are fortunate indeed if in your immediate and anxious investigation of the boiler you are yet in time to avert irretrievable damage.

Any dirty water or refuse which is thrown away at all is flung just outside the kitchen door, where it lies in unsightly heaps and pools, attracting myriads of flies; a plentiful sprinkling of which, needless to state, find their way, in a drowned, boiled, baked, roast or fried condition, into every article of food sent to table. Occasionally a teaspoon is tossed out among the rubbish, and lies glittering in the sunshine, ready to tempt the first ostrich that happens to prowl past the door. A very frequent counting of plate is necessary; and indeed, with such careless and not always honest servants, it is best to have no silver in daily use.

Breakages are ruinously numerous; each rough-handed Phillis in succession having her own private hiding-place, generally in the middle of some large bush, where—in spite of the standing promise that any accident honestly confessed will receive instant pardon—the fragments of all the glass, earthenware, and china destroyed through her carelessness are quietly put away out of sight, and, as she hopes, out of mind. Then perhaps, one day, having a little time to spare, you are looking about among the bushes to find out where the white turkey lays, and suddenly see, gleaming out through the dark foliage, what you at first take for a goodly number of the expected eggs. But alas! on closer investigation you recognize the familiar patterns of your pretty breakfast and dinner services; chosen carefully in England, with bright anticipations of the colonial home for which they were destined. For a long time their number has been mysteriously but steadily decreasing; till now there are but two soup-plates left, the cracked and chipped vegetable-dishes cannot among them boast of one handle, and the tureen, being without a lid, has to be covered ignominiously with a plate. Egg-cups there are none, and their places have long been supplied—not altogether unsuccessfully—by napkin-rings.

Constant relays of cups and saucers, as well as of glasses, are needed from Port Elizabeth; a dozen of either lasting but a very short time in the coloured girl's destructive hands. Opportunities of getting things sent up to the farm do not present themselves every week; and to be provided, at one and the same time, with a sufficient supply of both glass and china is as unheard-of a state of affluence as was the possession, by poor Mr. Wilfer, of a hat and a complete suit of clothes all new together. An influx of unexpected visitors is sure to arrive at the time of greatest deficiency; and the wine at dinner often has to be poured into a motley collection of drinking-vessels, among which breakfast and tea-cups, in a sadly saucerless and handleless condition, largely predominate over glasses. Another time it is the china which is conspicuous by its absence; a large party of strangers who have out-spanned at the dam are asked in to rest for an hour or two on their journey, and the hostess finds herself obliged to hand the afternoon tea to her guests in tumblers.

The linen fares no better at the hands of Phillis than does the china. The best table-cloths and most delicate articles of clothing are invariably hung to dry, either on ungalvanized wires which streak them with iron-mould, or on the thorniest bushes available, from whose cruel hooks, pointing in all directions, it is impossible to free them without many a rent. You spend much time and trouble over the work of extricating them, remonstrate with Phillis for the hundredth time on her rough treatment of them, and soon after, passing again, find that, all having been spread out on the stony ground near the dam, right in the path of the ostriches coming up from the water, numerous muddy impressions of large, two-toed feet crossing and recrossing the linen necessitate the whole wash being done over again. Although a clothes-line and pegs are provided, they are contemptuously ignored, and—the latter especially—never used except under the closest supervision; thus handkerchiefs, socks, and all the lighter articles of wearing-apparel are allowed to go flying away across the veldt; where, on long rides, you occasionally recognize fragments of them flapping about dismally on the bushes.

A strict watch has to be kept on the table-napkins, or they are sure to be carried to the kitchen and pressed into the dirtiest of service as dish-cloths, lamp-cleaners, etc. However many kitchen-cloths and dusters may have been given out, you never find one which is fit to touch; nor, until experience has taught you to keep the paraffin and its attendant rags under lock and key, and yourself to superintend the cleaning and filling of the lamps, is there one cloth which does not communicate the smell and flavour of the oil to every plate, cup, and glass brought to table. Every cloth is saturated with grease, all have large holes burnt in them, and a good many have been deliberately torn into quarters, or into whatever smaller sizes Phillis may have judged convenient for her ends. She has spared only those which, with their broad pink-and-white borders—with "Teacloth" in large letters, and a little teapot in each corner—have pleased her eye, and struck her as suitable adornments for her person; and which accordingly you often find twisted round the woolly head in place of the red and yellow turban, or gracefully draped on neck and shoulders as a fichu.

Like other daughters of Eve, she possesses her due amount of vanity, and has her own ideas—though they are sometimes strange ones—on the subject of improving her personal appearance. If she is of a careful turn of mind, and mends her own dresses—though most frequently she wears them torn and buttonless, fastened together only by the numerous black or white safety-pins which she has abstracted—she scorns to patch with the same colour, or anything near it, but introduces as much variety as possible into the garment by choosing the strongest contrasts of hue and greatest diversity of materials. Thus her pink or yellow cotton dress will be patched with a piece of scarlet flannel or bright blue woollen stuff; the blue skirt, of which the latter is a portion, having been tastefully repaired with a large square of Turkey red.

One day a bottle of salad oil is dropped and broken on the sitting-room floor; and Phillis is called in to remove the traces of the accident. Why does she look so delighted as she goes down on her knees beside the unctuous pool? and why does she not proceed to wipe it up? The reason is soon seen when she prepares for action by whisking off her bright handkerchief-turban. Then the pallid palms of her monkey-like hands are plunged blissfully into the oily mess, and again and again vigorously rubbed over head and countenance, till the thick mass of wool is saturated and dripping like a wet sponge, and the laughing face shines like a mirror. She is far too much absorbed to notice the amusement her performance is giving to hosts and guests; and when all the late contents of the bottle have been successfully transferred to her person, she goes back in high glee to her kitchen, rejoicing in her increased loveliness.

The house work is no less of a failure than are the kitchen and laundry departments. The art of bed-making has to be taught, with much patience and perseverance, to each successive untutored savage; who—if she has not come straight from some bee-hive-shaped hut where beds are totally unknown—has lived in a Boer's house where, when it is thought worth while to make the beds at all (by no means an every-day business) it is never done till the evening, when it is just time to return to them—and then is not done in a manner which at all accords with English ideas. In the morning, each portion of the room and each article of furniture which requires cleaning or dusting must be separately and individually pointed out to your handmaiden; the corner where you do not specially tell her to sweep, and the table or bookshelf which you forget to commend to the attentions of her feather-brush, being invariably left untouched. It is the same with all the rest of her work; you have long ago found it impossible to make her understand a thing once for all, or to establish any sort of regular routine. She needs to be daily reminded of each daily duty, or it is not done. And then, unless under constant supervision, most wearying to her mistress, it is sure to be done wrong. Of course she never thinks of reminding you of anything, but is only too delighted if you have forgotten it. If, through some unlucky oversight, you have not told her to put the joint into the oven and the potatoes on the fire, the chances are that both will be found uncooked when the dinner-hour arrives. And even when all is ready to be served up, you must again remind her of each dish, and of the proper order in which it is to make its entrance, or it is quite certain to be brought in at the wrong stage of the repast—if brought at all. But perhaps you have become absorbed in the conversation at table, and so are unobservant of the non-appearance of the greens or other vegetables, till next morning you find them, still in the saucepan, and in a cold and sodden condition.

Thus every detail of each day's "trivial round" has to pass through the mind of the mistress, who is compelled to neglect her work in looking after that of a servant who will not use her own head. One goes to bed at night footsore with running after this terrible servant; and with a head still more wearied by the constant strain of doing all the thinking for every department of the housekeeping. Of course it amounts to much the same as doing the work yourself; and but for "the honour of the thing"—like the Irishman strutting along proudly inside the bottomless sedan-chair, though complaining that he "might as well have walked"—you might as well be without a servant. With South African domestics one realizes indeed the meaning of the word "eye-service"; for not one of them, even the best, knows what it is to be conscientious. They never do a thing right because it is right; whatever they think will not be seen is neglected; and they are placidly indifferent as to whether their work is done well or badly, and whether you are pleased or not. One gets so tired of the apathetic yellow or black faces; which never brighten but into a childish laugh, generally at something which is the reverse of a laughing matter for the employer.

Altogether, Phillis is in every way exasperating, and is the great drawback to life on Cape farms. But she is the only kind of servant available; and if you lose patience with her and let her go, you may have to do the whole work of the house yourself, possibly for a week or more, till another, closely resembling her, or perhaps worse, can be found. Therefore, you put up with much, rather than make a change which would involve the training of a raw recruit all unused to English ways, to cleanliness, and to comfort; and indeed hardly acquainted with the rudiments of civilization.

But, unluckily, Phillis herself loves change; it is irksome to her volatile nature to remain long in one place; and accordingly, just as she is becoming used to your ways, and you flatter yourself that you will eventually get her into some sort of training, she flits off, regardless of the inconvenience she may cause. She never tells you in a straightforward manner that she wishes to leave; never gives you time to look out for a substitute; but departs unexpectedly, and always in one of two ways. Most commonly she rises in sudden insubordination, gets up a row of the first magnitude on some trifling pretence, and behaves in so turbulent and uproarious a manner that you are thankful to be rid of her at any cost, and dismiss her then and there; which is just what she wanted.

Or, if she is one of the more peaceful and amiable sort, and has some kindly feeling for the "missis," she leaves the latter in the lurch in a less offensive, though even more heartless manner. She does not ask for a holiday, but announces her intention of taking one; faithfully promises to return at the end of four days, and departs, riding astride on a lean and ragged scarecrow of a horse, brought for her by a party of Hottentot friends. It is true she leaves no possessions behind to ensure her coming back; for she never has any luggage, and her wardrobe, being of the scantiest, is all well contained in the handkerchief-bundle which jogs at her side as she trots off. But new chums, fresh from England, and innocent of the ways of the Karroo, are always taken in the first time the trick is played on them; and as the queer-looking cavalcade departs, bearing in its midst the giggling Phillis, no disquieting suspicions cross the mistress's mind. She determines to make the best of it for those four days, and goes bravely to work; either single-handed, or with the so-called help of a small Hottentot girl, who comes just when she chooses—sometimes remaining away a whole day, sometimes arriving in the afternoon when most of the work is done—and who lives so far off that going after her would be useless waste of time. The hours are counted to the time appointed for Phillis's return, but—needless to state—she is never again seen or heard of; and the victim of her fraud learns by experience that as soon as a servant talks of a holiday it is time to begin the weary search for a successor; never found without plenty of riding about the country, much inquiring on neighbouring and distant farms, and many disappointments.

It is not much use taking English servants to the Karroo; the life is too dull for them, they hear of high wages to be had in Port Elizabeth and other towns, and you never keep them long. The man and wife, both excellent servants, who came with us from England, left us soon after we came up-country; and from that time we had none but coloured servants for house and farm. There was indeed a sudden transformation in our little kitchen; from the quiet, neatly-dressed, white-aproned Mrs. Wells to noisy Hottentot Nancy, in dirtiest of pink cotton, profusely patched with blue and yellow. And the kitchen itself was no less changed than its presiding genius. Now began a time of good hard work for me—for which the usual bringing-up of English girls, followed by years of travel and of hotel life, was not the best of training; and, though I had learned much from Mrs. Wells, I was often sadly at a loss during the first weeks after her departure. No dish, however simple, which I myself was not able to cook, could be cooked by Nancy or any of her successors; all were obliged to see it done at least once before they would attempt it. At this time cookery-books were almost my only literature; and many times a day I sought counsel in a bulky volume wherein recipes and prescriptions, law and natural history, etiquette and the poultry-yard, formed a somewhat startling jumble; and whose index presented, in immediate juxtaposition, such incongruous subjects as liver, lobster, lumbago—marmalade, mayonnaise, measles, meat—shrimps, Shropshire pudding, sick-room, sirloin, sitting-hens, etc. As many despairing sighs as ever fluttered the inky pages of a school lesson-book were breathed over this stout volume. T——, who, after living for years in rougher places than the Karroo, has acquired considerable experience and is a capital cook, helped me out of many a difficulty; and in time I learned to be a tolerably good general servant—which you must be yourself, if you are ever to do any good with Kaffirs or Hottentots. But it was a pity that, when young, instead of many of the things learned at school, I did not acquire what would at this time have made me more independent of servants.

Why is not a knowledge of cooking and housekeeping made a part of every English girl's education? Then, in the event of a colonial life being one day her lot, she is to some extent prepared to encounter the difficulties of that life; while, even if she should marry a millionaire, and be waited on hand and foot for the rest of her days, she is none the worse for possessing the knowledge of how things ought to be done in her house—indeed, every woman who orders a dinner should know something of how it is to be cooked.

Nancy, our first native servant, was also the best we ever had; always bright and good-tempered, and singing over her work in a really charming voice. On the whole she was far more intelligent than most of her race; and we were really sorry when the equestrian family party carried her from our sight, never to return. Then came a succession of "cautions," each worse than her predecessor; and between them all we did indeed, as Mark Twain has it, "know something about woe."

Nancy's immediate successor was in every respect her opposite; idle, impudent, surly, and dishonest; eating as much as two men, but doing no work that was worth anything. She kept yawning all day with loud howls that were most depressing to hear; and when I went into the kitchen I was pretty sure to find her fast asleep, with head and arms on the table.

Our next specimen was a nearly white half-caste, with light-coloured wool, and pale-grey, dead-looking eyes; who always reminded us of one of the horrible, sickly-looking white lizards, so common in Karroo houses. She was half-witted, and most uncanny-looking; with such a ghastly, cold, unsympathetic manner and stony stare that we named her Medusa. We could have picked out many a better servant from the Earlswood Asylum. I was continually trying to think of all the idiotic things she might possibly do, and thus guard against them beforehand; yet she always took me by surprise by doing something ten times more stupid than anything I had dreamed of.

Then came a tall, gaunt old Mozambique negress; in appearance unpleasantly like an ancient Egyptian mummy, and with clothing which looked as though it had been "resurrected" at the same time as herself from a repose of some three thousand years. Only a dirty old black pipe, seldom absent from her lips, savoured, not of the necropolis of Thebes or of Memphis, but of the very vilest Boer tobacco. Besides being an inveterate old thief, she was the exact opposite of a total abstainer; and the frequent "drop too much" in which she indulged was always the occasion for a display of choice language and a reckless destruction of crockery.

But these are enough; suffice it to say that the same types of character ran through a long line of successors, and that, taking them all round, I had about the same amount of trouble with all of them.

T——'s men required almost as much looking after as my women; and, in order to get his herds off to work in good time, it was generally necessary for him to go down himself at sunrise to their little huts, not far from the house, and wake them up. As a rule they were not fond of work; and many were the excuses they would invent in order to avoid it as much as possible. Being "sick" was of course a favourite plea; and, whatever the nature of the complaint from which they professed themselves to be suffering, they were always convinced that a suppje (drink) of prickly pear brandy or of "Cape smoke"[5] would be just the thing to set them right. At one time quite an epidemic of sham sickness broke out; but, as we soon saw through the trick, and knew that our would-be patients were perfectly well, we did not indulge them with their favourite remedy, but determined to make an example. We accordingly treated a very palpable case of shamming with a medicine of our own concoction. We mixed a good saucerful of Gregory's powder and castor oil into the thickest of paste; and prolonged the agony by making the man eat the stuff with a teaspoon, while we stood sternly on guard, to see that there was no evasion. And then we promised a second dose in the event of the first failing to effect a cure. No need to say that the victim hastened to report himself quite well, and that as long as he remained on the farm he was never "sick" again. The fame of the terrible medicine spread, and we did not hear of much more illness among our men.

This dose was mild, however, in comparison with one of which I have heard, which was prepared by some gentlemen of our acquaintance. They were living in a tent on the Diamond Fields; and for some time had noticed a very rapid diminution of their supply of brandy. Not knowing which of their native servants was the culprit, they resolved to set a trap; and, putting a little croton oil into the brandy-bottle, left the latter in a temptingly prominent position. The next morning one of the servants, a big, stout fellow, was missing; and for ten days nothing was seen or heard of him. When, at the end of that time, he reappeared, he was transformed into such a poor, limp, wasted living skeleton that he could hardly be recognised. He went back to his work without a word; and never again did the brandy-bottle's attractions lure him from the path of honesty.

The best and most hard-working of all our men was a sturdy Zulu, who, both in face and figure, exactly resembled that life-like wooden statue—one of the oldest in the world—which, in the Museum at Cairo, gives us so accurate a portrait of an ancient Egyptian. In looking at it you feel that you can read the character of this man who lived three or four thousand years ago; and know that, although one of the best-tempered of souls, he was as obstinate as Pharaoh himself. Nor were these qualities lacking in his modern fac-simile, the ostrich-herd; whose broad countenance, as he strode after his long-legged charges, bearing, in place of the Egyptian's staff of office, a stout tackey, wore the identical expression which that artist of long ago has caught so well. The good fellow showed a laudable tenacity of purpose in the steady perseverance with which he was putting by all he could save of his wages, and investing the money in cows. With these latter it was his intention to purchase a wife, as soon as a sufficient number could be collected to satisfy the demands of the prospective father-in-law.

A marriage after this fashion, although not quite in accordance with English ideas, has certainly the advantage of inducing good habits in the intending Benedick. In the first place, he learns to economize instead of spending his money on drink. He will, of course, take as many suppjes as you like to offer him; but you will never find him going off on the spree for two or three days, and coming back considerably the worse for his outing, as those of his brethren who have not his motive for thrift are too fond of doing. He is altogether a better servant than they, being less independent and more anxious to please. Often, too, he learns to exercise much patience; for, if the girl is pretty, or the father—who always has a keen eye to business—observes that the swain is very devoted, a high price is fixed; and the bridegroom-elect has to work for years, like Jacob for Rachel, till he has accumulated the required number of cows.

Daughters, being such a profitable source of capital, are of course much valued by the parents; to whom, besides, in that sunniest of climates, a large family brings none of the cares and anxieties which it entails on the English labouring-man. The more children a Zulu has, the better he is pleased; the birth of a girl especially being welcomed as gladly as is that of a son among the Jews, and indeed among Orientals generally.

English people settling in the Cape Colony usually start with a strong prejudice in favour of the coloured race. They think them ill-treated, bestow on them a good deal of unmerited sympathy, and credit them with many good qualities which they do not possess. By the time they have been a year or two in the country a reaction has set in; they have discovered that the negro is a fraud; they hate him, and cannot find anything bad enough to say of him. Then a still longer experience teaches them that the members of this childish race are, after all, not so bad, but that they require keeping in their places—treating in fact as you would treat children twelve years old. In intelligence, indeed, they never seem to advance much beyond that age. You must, of course, be just with them; but always keep them at a distance. Above all, never let either men or women servants know that you are pleased with them, or they will invariably presume.

It seems a hard thing to say, but it does not do to be too patient and indulgent; excessive leniency only spoils them, just as it does the Hindoo servants. One of our relatives, a kind and gentle chaplain in India, finding that he was worse waited on than any of his neighbours, and asking his head servant one day why the latter and all his subordinates worked so badly, paid so little attention to orders, etc., received the following candid answer from the man: "Why not sahib give plenty stick, and mem-sahib call plenty pig? Then we good servants."

A Boer gets much more work out of the natives than an Englishman. The latter is at one time too severe, and at another too lenient; but the Boer's treatment is uniformly just and firm. Perhaps the expression, "like a Dutch uncle," may have originated in the Cape Colony.

The Zulus and Kaffirs are by nature fine, generous characters, comparatively free from dishonesty and untruthfulness; though unfortunately they too soon acquire both these vices, as well as numerous others, when they come in contact with civilization, which in their case certainly seems, as Bret Harte has it, "a failure." On the Diamond Fields the best servants are invariably those who are taken fresh from their kraals; even the fact of their knowing a few words of English being found a disadvantage.

A Zulu is always somewhat of a gentleman, and possesses a certain code of honour, although to us it seems rather a queer one. For instance, though he will on no account rob his own master, he will not hesitate to steal a sheep from a neighbouring farm, if he should happen to feel inclined for a "big feed"; on which occasion the amount of meat he is able to consume at one sitting is positively alarming. He evidently looks upon the sheep much as Queen Elizabeth is said to have regarded the goose, viz., as a creature of most inconvenient size, "too much for one, but not enough for two." When periodical rations of meat are served out to him he always eats up the whole of his allowance on the first evening, apparently oblivious of the fact that he will have to go without for the rest of the week. And then he subsists, contentedly enough, on mealies, till the joyful time comes for his next good square meal of goat or mutton. He is the happiest and best-tempered of souls, never bearing any animosity, and always ready to forgive; and although he seems incapable of any real attachment to his employers, and is most strangely destitute of all sense of gratitude, one cannot help liking him. Altogether the Zulus are quite the aristocracy of the negro race; and, even at their worst, contrast very favourably with the Hottentots and Bushmen, whose character has hardly a redeeming point, and seems made up of all the lowest and most ignoble qualities.

CHAPTER XI.

HOW WE FARED.

Angora goats — Difficulty of keeping meat — The plague of flies — Rations — Our store — Barter — Fowls — Chasing a dinner — Fowls difficult to rear — Secretary birds as guardians of the poultry-yard — Jacob in the Karroo — He comes down in the world — He dies — Antelopes — A springbok hunt — The Queen's birthday in the Karroo — Colonial dances — Our klipspringer — Superstition about hares — Game birds — Paauw — Knorhaan — Namaqua partridges — Porcupines — A short-lived pet — Indian corn — Stamped mealies — Whole-meal bread — Plant used for making bread rise — Substitutes for butter — Priembesjes — A useful tree — Wild honey — The honey bird — Enemies of bees — Moth in bees' nests — Good coffee — Sour milk.

"How did you live?" is a question we have very often been asked by friends, who, evidently thinking that our fare on that far-away South African farm must necessarily have been of the roughest, and that from a gastronomic point of view we were deeply to be pitied, have been quite surprised to hear that on the whole we lived very well.

To be sure there were drawbacks. In the first place, however simply you may live in the Cape Colony, you cannot possibly live cheaply; for import duties are ruinously heavy, and almost everything, with the exception of meat, has to be imported. Wheat, for instance, has to be brought from Australia; the poor, dry South African colony being quite unable to produce anything like a sufficient supply for its needs. Then, too, green vegetables are very far from being an everyday item in the menu; and as for fresh fish, it is a still rarer luxury, indeed throughout all the long, hot summer it is absolutely unobtainable on the farms, and one almost forgets what it is like. Eggs and butter, too, have their long periods, first of excessive and increasing scarcity, and then of entire absence from kitchen and table.

But in the colonies people soon learn to accommodate themselves to circumstances, and contentedly to do without many of the things which in England seemed such necessary adjuncts to daily life. They even become accustomed to a very sad lack of variety in the matter of meat. From one year's end to another merino mutton and Angora goat are almost unchangingly the order of the day; the bill of fare being varied by beef only on those rare occasions, during the very coldest weather, when one of the farmers—having ascertained beforehand that a sufficient number of neighbours are willing to share the meat—is enterprising enough to slaughter an ox. But the difficulties of keeping meat are such that sheep and goats are generally found to be quite large enough; indeed, in the hot weather, they are very much too large, and one is continually wishing that a diminutive race of mutton-producing quadrupeds—say of the size of Skye terriers—were in existence for the benefit of housekeepers in sultry climates. Fortunately you do not get so tired of perpetual mutton as might be expected, and it does not pall on the taste as beef or fowl would do under the same circumstances. As we had only a few sheep, but possessed a flock of several hundred Angoras, our standing dish was, of course, goat. Let not the traveller pity us who on his journeyings—in Southern Europe for instance—has had the misfortune to partake of the tough, stringy, and strongly-flavoured goat's flesh too often iniquitously substituted for mutton by unprincipled hotel-keepers. As different as black from white is that unholy viand from our delicious Angora meat; equal, if not superior, to the best mutton.

The goats are beautiful creatures, with a profusion of long, wavy hair, which is as soft and glossy as the finest silk, and which, in the thoroughbred animals, is of the purest white, and nearly touches the ground. In the evening it is a pretty sight to watch the goats coming down from the mountains, on whose steep and rocky sides they have browsed all day; and where, as they descend, they form a long line of snowy white against the red and green background of the aloes and spekboom. It is pleasant, too, to go out to the kraals when the little kids, which all arrive at about the same time, are only a few days old. These goats are prolific creatures, many of them having two, or even three young ones at once. The crowded enclosure is all alive with the merry, noisy little fellows, jumping and scampering about in all directions; and within a few days the number of the flock seems to have almost doubled.

Angora goats are now more profitable than ostriches; although the hair, like feathers, has sadly decreased in value, the price having fallen from 4s. 6d. to 9d. per lb. It seems strange that Angora hair should remain at such a low price; for a costly plush is now made from it, besides very beautiful rugs, many of them perfect imitations of leopard, tiger, and seal-skin—the latter hardly less expensive than real seal.

The morning on which a goat or sheep is killed—especially during very hot weather—ushers in a time of care and anxiety for the frugal housewife. From the moment when the animal expires under the black herd's hands, until the last joint has been brought to table, that meat is an incubus which sits heavy on her soul all day, and occasionally even haunts her dreams at night. She has to wage persistent war against adverse agencies, always in readiness to work its destruction, and, with all her vigilance, too often successfully robbing her of a good portion of it.

First and foremost of all enemies are the flies in the field. As soon as the dead goat or sheep is hung up out of doors, in as cool and shady a place as can be found—though this is by no means saying much—it must instantly be enclosed in a capacious, tightly-tied and carefully-mended bag of mosquito-net, large enough to cover the whole animal. For all around, buzzing excitedly, and eagerly looking out for an opening, however small, through which to squeeze in and do their deadly work, are crowds of big, noisy, determined blue-bottles—though, by the way, if I may be allowed so Irish an expression, in the Karroo these abominations are all green, and—gorgeous as Brazilian beetles—flash like great emeralds in the sunshine.

Phillis, of course, cannot be trusted to go alone to that open-air larder, for she will invariably leave the bag unfastened, even if by her rough handling she does not tear a yawning rent in its side. In the house too, she does her utmost to further the evil designs of the flies, and, if she uses the meat-safe at all, makes a point of leaving it wide open till a host of "green-bottles" has collected inside; when she closes it, leaving them in blissful possession of their prize.

And oh, the house-flies! Truly the plague of flies is in every Karroo home; and, next to the servants, it is the greatest bane of farm life. And what flies they are! Their brethren in other parts of the world, though obnoxious enough, can almost by comparison be called well-behaved. For, except when eatables are about, they do seem to have some idea of keeping to themselves and minding their own business; which latter usually consists in dancing—in the air, and always in the very centre of the room—a kind of quadrille of many intricate figures, the accurate performance of which, holding them completely engrossed, keeps them, for a time at least, out of mischief. But the South African fly has no such resources of his own to keep him amused; consequently he devotes all his energy and the whole of his time to one object—that of making life a burden to the unfortunate human beings on whom he has chosen to quarter himself. Not content with spoiling your appetite at meals by the exhibition of his repulsive little black body in every dish that comes to table, every cup of tea or glass of wine that is poured out—where, whether cooked to death, or yet alive and struggling, it is an equally unwelcome and disgusting sight—he makes it his business to see that throughout the whole day you do not, if he can help it, get one instant's peace. No matter how large the room may be, no place in it will suit him for a perch but just your nose, or the hand which happens to be busily engaged in some operation requiring extreme steadiness, to which a jerk would be fatal; and however many times he is rebuffed, he comes back, with the most unerring and fiendish precision, to exactly the self-same spot, till he has set up a maddening irritation, not only of the skin, but still more of the temper. For he possesses, in the very strongest degree, the quality which led those most observant of naturalists, the ancient Egyptians, to institute the military order of the Fly. A good general, they argued, is like a fly; for, however often he may be repulsed, he always returns persistently to the attack. So they invested the successful leader of their armies with a gold chain, from which, at intervals, hung several large flies of pure, beaten gold, about four inches broad across the closed wings. And in the Cairo Museum a very beautiful chain of this kind is to be seen.

That South African fly was, indeed, the torment of our lives, until one day we made a grand discovery. We found out that he could not stand Keating's insect-powder. If only the smallest grain of it touched any part of his person he was doomed; and in about five minutes would be sprawling helplessly on his back, preparing to quit a world in which he had been so great a nuisance. "Peppering the flies" became a regular institution, the first business of each morning; and in all the rooms, most especially in the kitchen—where the whole atmosphere seemed one vast buzz—the foe would be driven, by the vigorous flapping of a cloth, into the well-sprinkled windows where his fate awaited him. Soon every fly would be dead; and as we gloated over the dustpans full of slain we invoked benedictions on the name of Keating.

By taking care to keep every door and window on the sunny side of the house either closed or covered with fine net, we managed, thanks to this delightful powder, to exist in peace, instead of being given over to the flies like our neighbours; many of whom would calmly submit to any nuisance rather than take a little trouble to get rid of it, and would sit quite contentedly in the midst of a buzzing cloud, with flies popping into their tea one after another, or struggling by dozens in the butter-dish. We found that one of the small bellows made for blowing tobacco-smoke into bee-hives became, when filled with Keating, a very formidable engine of destruction; a couple of puffs, sending the fine powder in all directions, would settle every fly in the room. In fact no one, even in the most tropical of climates, need be troubled with flies, if only this simple remedy is used. If I had but known of its efficacy a few years before, when up the Nile on a dahabieh swarming with flies! And if, in that same Egypt, poor Menephtah had only known of it three thousand years ago! Mr. Keating's fortune would have been a colossal one if he had lived then.

But to return to our Angora. As soon as the meat has been cut up it is usually sprinkled very plentifully with salt, and wrapped up for a few hours in the skin; after which the greater portion of it is put into pickle. For in the hot weather only a very small quantity can be eaten unsalted, as it becomes tainted almost at once. Even in strong brine, and with the most careful rubbing and turning, the meat is sometimes quite uneatable on the second day, especially if the weather happens to be thundery. And thunder-storms, when they do come, almost invariably select the time when an animal has just been killed. N.B.—The "pope's eye" must always be carefully taken out as soon as the meat is cut up, or the joint will immediately become tainted.

Where the family is a small one it is a good plan, during the hot weather, to include meat among the men's rations. The herds on the farms receive weekly, as part of their pay, a certain quantity of meal, coffee, sugar, salt, tobacco, etc.; and the store where all these supplies are kept and weighed out on large and business-like scales, looks—with its piles of sacks and packing-cases, its numerous shelves, rows of bottles, tins of preserved meats and other provisions—not at all unlike the general shop of an English village, with a little in the chemist's and tobacconist's line as well.

It is the work of the mistress of the house to give out the rations; and her movements, while manipulating the scales, are watched in a very criticizing and suspicious manner by the black recipients, who always seem terribly afraid that she will give them short weight. In reality she is anxiously and almost nervously careful that every pound she gives them shall be a good one; and if she errs at all it is on their side, never on her own. In the matter of tobacco her heart is especially soft, and the spans she measures off those great coils of dark-brown rope—which surely must be akin to "pigtail tobacco"—are far longer than can be stretched by her hand, or indeed by any hand but that of a giant. But in this, as in every other item of the rations, she is most unjustly and ungratefully suspected of a systematic course of cheating. Sometimes "April" or "August," struck with a sudden bright idea, comes up to the table, and, with many monkey-like gestures, makes a close investigation of the scales and weights; peeping beneath them and looking at them from all sides, to see by what artful device they have been made the means of tricking him. He fails to discover anything; but retires shaking his woolly head dubiously, and as far off as ever from believing in the honesty of his employers.

Sometimes a little barter is carried on, in quite a primitive, old-fashioned way, with Dutchmen travelling by in large waggons drawn by sixteen or eighteen oxen, and often bringing with them very good onions, oranges, naatjes or mandarines, nuts, dried peaches and figs—both of which latter are excellent for stewing,—and many other things, which they are glad to exchange on the farms for coffee, sugar, etc. This barter is quite the usual way of doing business in the Karroo; and so many transactions are carried on without the aid of money, that the latter is hardly required, and indeed is seldom seen on the farms. If a man or woman servant comes to do an odd day's work, or a passing workman breaks his journey by staying a couple of days and making himself generally useful, payment is almost always made in meal, coffee, or other articles of food, instead of in money. Copper coins, being universally despised, are not in use; consequently the most trifling service performed, however badly, by one of the coloured race, must be rewarded with no smaller sum than threepence, or—to give it its familiar colonial name—a "tickey."

Fowls, of course, with their obligingly convenient size, are an invaluable boon in the hot weather; and it is a delightful relief when, with an empty larder and consequent light heart, free for a while from the cares and anxieties of the meat, you prolong the respite, and—putting off till to-morrow the slaying of the next four-legged incubus—sacrifice in its stead the noisiest crower, or the most inveterate of the kitchen's feathered intruders. To be sure, hurried, as he is, straight from his last agonies, into the pot or the oven, you cannot expect him to be very tender; but an attempt at hanging him is too likely to result in the sudden discovery that he has hung a little too long, and you have learnt by experience that it is best to eat him at once. And a dessert-spoonful of vinegar, administered half an hour before his execution, will always considerably mitigate his toughness.

Karroo fowls, living a free and active life, are exceedingly agile on their legs, and when their time comes for paying the debt of nature they are by no means easy to catch. But Toto took this duty upon himself, and very jealously asserted his right to perform it. All we had to do was to point out to him the selected victim. Then, with the true collie instinct, he would follow it up, never losing it or making any mistake; and, though it might take refuge in the midst of some twenty or thirty other fowls, Toto would pick it out from among the crowd without an instant's hesitation. And when caught, it was never pounced on roughly, but just quietly held down by the big, gentle paws, from which it would be taken, perfectly unhurt.

How I missed the aid of Toto one day when—he being far away in Kent, and we living near Tangier—I was at my wits' end for a dinner, and trying my hardest to catch a fowl! It was Ramadan—that terrible time when everything goes wrong and everybody is cross—and no wonder; the cruel fast, more strictly kept in orthodox Morocco than it is in most Oriental lands, forbidding the votaries of Islam, from sunrise to sunset, not only to touch food, but even to moisten their parched lips with water—and this in hot weather too! No wonder the sunset gun, instead of being to them the welcome signal for a feast, often finds them so faint and exhausted that they are in no hurry to begin eating. And no wonder, too, that Moorish servants—never very far behind those of South Africa in stupidity—are at this time a greater trial of patience than ever. One does not like to be hard on them, and the minimum of work is given to them; but everything is done so badly that their services might almost as well be dispensed with until the fast is over. Altogether, during this time of woe, the tempers of employers and employed are about equally tried.

Mohammed, our genius, who at the best of times was sure to forget one or more important items of the day's marketing, had on this occasion omitted just everything that was necessary to make a dinner. The bread was there, to be sure, so too were figs and dates; but, all having been put loose into the donkey's panniers and well jolted along the roughest of roads, the eatables had become so hopelessly mixed up with a large dab of native soft soap, bought for the week's washing, that they were only disentangled with difficulty, and the most careful cleansing failed to make them fit for human food. An earthenware jar of honey had been bought; but, being unprovided with a stopper, and left to roll about in the pannier as it pleased, it had poured its contents as a libation along the road, and, when complacently handed to me by Mohammed, was perfectly empty. All the non-edible articles of the day's orders had been carefully remembered, and stowed well away from the soap; but of fish, flesh, or fowl there was no sign. The poor fasting man could not be sent all the way back to Tangier to make good the deficiencies; yet a dinner had to be found somehow for T—— and for a gentleman guest, and with the aid of the servants I set to work to catch one of our own fowls.

But I little knew what I was attempting. Our garden, on the steep slopes of Mount Washington, with its many terraces and walks, flights of rough stone steps, and tangle of luxuriant vegetation, offered so many points of vantage to the active birds, that at the end of half an hour we were all exhausted with running, breathless and giddy with the heat; while the fowls, on the contrary, fresher and livelier than ever, seemed mocking all our efforts to catch them; and in despair I took from its hiding-place a little weapon of defence, provided in view of possible midnight visits from burglarious Moors.

Grasping the revolver in one hand, and with the other treacherously holding out a sieve of barley, I stalked one fowl after another in most unsportsmanlike fashion; inviting the guileless creatures to feed, and then firing at them, sometimes so close that it seemed as if the intended victim must be blown to pieces. But no, there he was, when the smoke cleared away, going off with a triumphant chuckle; wilder and more wary with each unsuccessful shot.

What was to be done? Time was passing; T—— would be coming home hungry by dinner-time, ready for something better than a vegetarian repast; and some creature or other—I began to feel that I did not very much care what—had not only to be caught and killed, but also cooked. Reckless and desperate, I began firing indiscriminately, even on my laying hens; but, gladly though I would have killed the best of them, not one could I hit. At last all the hunted birds were in a state of the wildest excitement; none were in sight, and an agonized chorus of cackling resounded from all parts of the garden, as if the largest and most venomous of snakes had been seen. Flinging down the revolver in disgust, I meditated the crowning baseness of snatching the poor old sitting hen from the eggs on which she had quietly sat throughout the commotion, when—joyful sight—Mohammed, who had mysteriously vanished, suddenly reappeared, triumphantly holding up by the neck a plucked fowl. It was but a poor, scraggy, spidery-looking thing, all legs and wings, and with an appearance of having kept Ramadan no less strictly than the Moorish owners from whose hut the poor fellow—anxious to retrieve his fault—had brought it. But it was something off which to dine; and never was the fattest Christmas turkey more welcome than was its timely appearance.

The rearing of fowls in South Africa is attended with endless difficulties and discouragements. Frequent epidemics of the fatal disease known as "fowl-sickness" decimate the poultry-yard, which, at the best of times, and with all care, can never be kept sufficiently stocked to supply the needs of the hot weather. Every possible foe of the gallinaceous tribe abounds in the Karroo; snakes invade the hen-house, and the blackmail which they levy on the eggs always amounts to what the Americans call "a large order;" birds of prey of many different sorts are constantly sailing over head, with sharp eyes on the look-out for opportunities of plunder; and jackals, wild cats, lynxes—or, as the Dutch call them, rooikats—and numerous other four-legged free-booters pounce at night on those hens foolish enough to make their nests far from the comparative safety of the house; the occasional discovery, in some distant bush, of a collection of empty eggshells and a heap of drifted feathers proclaiming what has been the fate of some long-missing hen or turkey.

Altogether, the poultry-keeper's troubles are considerably multiplied by the surpassing imbecility of the Karroo hens, which have no idea of taking care of themselves, and, like the ostriches, stoutly oppose all efforts made for their own welfare and that of their offspring. Their insanely erratic conduct during sitting causes by far the larger proportion of nests to come to nothing; and when they have succeeded in hatching a few chickens, they look as if they did not quite know what to do with them.

Secretary birds are sometimes taught to be very useful guardians of the poultry-yard, especially against aerial enemies,—the long-legged, solemn-looking creature stalking about all day among his feeble-minded charges, with much consciousness of his own importance. He is accused of now and then taking toll in the shape of an occasional egg or young chicken—the latter being of course bolted, anaconda-fashion; but his depredations are not extensive, and one tolerates them as one does those of the courier who, though himself not entirely above suspicion, takes good care that his master is robbed by no one else.

Our secretary, Jacob, whose education had been neglected in youth, refused to make himself useful as a protector of the poultry-yard. His character, never the most amiable, deteriorated rapidly after we brought him up-country, carefully packed for the long railway journey; the numerous bandages in which he was swathed to secure his long, slender legs from breakage giving him—but for his protruding, vulture-like head—the appearance of a gigantic ibis-mummy. Our first plan of making him trudge on foot along the road with the Walmer caravan of ostriches was given up, as we felt sure that, with his already-mentioned "cussedness," he would give more trouble to the herds than all the rest of the troop together, and either get a knock on the head to settle him, or else escape, never to be heard of again. At any rate, he would be quite sure not to arrive at his destination.

Poor Jacob did not flourish in the Karroo, where kittens were scarce, and where no butcher's cart brought daily and ample supplies for his colossal appetite; and an existence in which fresh meat was so rare a luxury must have been for him a kind of perpetual Lent.

With much resentment and plainly-expressed disgust at his reverse of fortune, he found himself obliged, late in life, to pick up a living for himself, and would wander dejectedly about the country for miles round, in search of the fat, succulent locusts, the frogs, small snakes, lizards, and mice on which he fed. The latter he caught in a most ingenious manner. Walking up to a bush wherein he knew a mouse was concealed, he would strike a violent blow with his wing on one side; then, as the startled animal ran out in the opposite direction, Jacob would make a lightning-like pounce, and bring down his murderous foot with unerring aim. On the whole he did not fare badly; but of course, after his luxurious bringing-up among the fleshpots of Walmer, it was but natural that he should object to working for a living.

Even in prosperous days he loved to look ill-used, and no comic actor could have better represented the character of an ill-tempered old man nursing a grievance than did the well-fed Jacob croaking under the windows in mendacious pretence of starvation; but now his part was so absurdly overacted that it became a burlesque. Nature at the same time assisted him in his make-up for the part, and, moulting and tail-less, with bald head and general out-at-elbows appearance, he looked indeed the seediest and most disreputable of old beggars. At the best of times he looked like a wicked old man, but now—no longer a sleek, well-clothed old sinner—he seemed to have degenerated into a ruined gambler, going rapidly to the dogs. Whenever there was a big rain he would come and stand in front of the windows, wet through and shivering ostentatiously, with the water running in a little stream from the tip of his hooked bill, giving him the appearance of one of the ugly gargoyles on an ancient cathedral. Obstinately refusing to come under cover, or even to keep himself comparatively dry by squatting under the kraal hedge, he would stand for hours out in the rain, looking ill-used and woe-begone; a picture of squalid, unlovely poverty.

We really pitied the old bird, and regretted our inability to give him daily the fresh meat which, in spite of frequent disappointments, he never failed to claim, noisily and importunately, as his right. He would come walking excitedly into the kitchen or bedroom, clamouring, with all the persistence of Shylock, for his pound of flesh; or would run after Wells as the latter went to chop wood, knocking against his legs, getting in his way to attract attention, and keeping up his horrible clock-work noise, till we wondered that that most patient and even-tempered of men, with the hatchet so handy, was not provoked into chopping off his head.

At last a long drought set in, and poor Jacob came still further down in the world; for, as the ground hardened, and vegetation dried up, the "mice and rats and such small deer" of the veldt became more scarce, and he had to travel longer distances in search of his prey. We did all we could for him, and kept quite a battery of mousetraps constantly set for his benefit; but, compared with his enormous demands, all we could give him was but as a drop in the ocean, and we felt that he despised us for our meanness. He grew daily more morose, and would vent his ill-humour by picking quarrels with the dogs and other creatures about the place, especially with a pretty little duyker antelope. This gentle and timid little favourite—a short-lived pet, which, wandering one day too far from home, was shot by a Boer in mistake for a wild animal—was several times attacked so savagely by the vengeful Jacob, that, if Wells had not beaten off the assailant, the little buck would have been killed. Fortunately Jacob, when excited, always made such a horrible noise, that we could hear when a battle was going on, and rush to the rescue. As the drought continued Jacob took to wandering further and further afield, coming to the house only on rare occasions, until at last he became almost like a wild bird; and we have little doubt that these roving propensities, at a time when water was only to be found at the few-and-far-between homesteads, led at last to the poor old fellow's death from thirst—a sad end for one of the most comical, if not the best-tempered of our pets.

Game, of course, forms a very welcome break in the monotony of constant goat and mutton. The antelopes, though by no means plentiful, are all excellent eating, and afford good sport. The graceful springbok, one of the most common, is capable of becoming very tame; and, with its slender limbs and bright-coloured, variegated coat, it is, but for its rather goat-like face, one of the prettiest of pet animals. On a large neighbouring farm the springbok were preserved, and now and then the somewhat even tenour of Karroo existence would be enlivened by a hunt, sometimes of several days' duration. The Queen's birthday is a favourite occasion for these festive gatherings; and from far and wide, some from distances of two or three days' journey, travelling on horseback or in roomy American spiders and carts capable of accommodating large family parties, visitors arrive in rapid succession, till the house—which at these times seems endowed with even more than the usual elasticity of the hospitable colonial homes—appears like some large hotel overflowing with guests. In the extensive plains surrounding the house the chase goes on merrily throughout the whole day; many of the hunted bucks being observable from the verandah as they speed lightly along, with a bounding motion suggestive of india-rubber balls, and with the sunlight flashing upon the ridge of long white bristles along the back, invisible when the animal is in repose, but erected when it is startled.

In the evening the trophies of the battue, sometimes amounting to the number of thirty, are laid side by side in close ranks upon the ground in front of the house, forming a noble display. The day's adventures are recounted, with much chaffing of the by no means few who have been bucked off or who have otherwise come to grief; T—— on one occasion bearing off the palm as the butt of the most pitiless jokes, his horse, declining the superadded weight of a fine buck, having deposited him on his head, in which acrobatic posture he is reported to have remained standing long enough to give rise to much speculation among the onlookers as to whether he intended finally to land on face or back.

By-and-by the silence of the veldt is further broken by the unaccustomed sound of fireworks, and of loud cheers for the Queen from the stout lungs of her lieges beneath the Southern Cross; then come some capital theatricals and a dance, the latter prolonged a good way into the small hours of the morning. There are no better dancers anywhere than the Cape colonists; they are of course passionately fond of the art in which they so much excel; and thus, when a large and merry party have collected—not without considerable difficulties, and at the cost of the longest and roughest of journeys—they naturally like to keep it up as long as possible, and it is by no means an uncommon thing on these occasions for people not to go to bed at all, but for the morning sun, peeping in under the vines of the verandah, to find the dance still in full swing.

The Cape negroes, too, are all born dancers; and it needs but a few notes scraped on a fiddle or wheezed on an asthmatic accordion to set a whole company of even the roughest and most uncouth Hottentots waltzing in perfect time, and in a quiet and almost graceful manner, strangely out of keeping with their ungainly forms.

Rarest among the antelopes is the klipspringer,[6] which is called the chamois of South Africa, and which, both in appearance and habits, closely resembles the Alpine animal. Its flesh, which is short and dark, with a flavour very like that of duck, is by far the best of all the venison; and its pretty coat is a marvel of softness and lightness, each hair being a wide tube as thick as a hedgehog's bristle, but soft as a feather. In spite of its light weight, this curious coat is wonderfully thick and durable, and saddle-cloths made from it are simply perfection.

A little klipspringer was brought to us, so young that for the first few weeks it was fed with milk from a baby's bottle. It soon grew tame, and it was very pretty to see the miniature chamois trotting confidingly about the house, always on the extreme tips of those natural alpenstocks, its little pointed feet. These tiny ferules, all four of which would have stood together on a penny-piece, were evidently capable of giving a firm foothold even in the most impossible places. This little creature was one of our unlucky pets—by far the most numerous class in the collection,—and our hope of taking him to England, where he would have enjoyed the proud distinction of being the first of his kind ever imported, was doomed to disappointment. Whether it is really the fact, as one is always told in South Africa, that this buck cannot live in captivity, or whether an inveterate habit of eating the contents of the waste-paper basket, with an impartial relish for printed and written matter, shortened the life of our specimen, I do not know; but rapid consumption set in, and the pathetic, almost human attacks of coughing were so distressing to witness that it was a relief when the poor little patient succumbed.

Then, also among the smaller antelopes, there are the duyker and stenbok. Both these pretty little bucks make forms like hares, and the stenbok, a wee thing very little larger than a hare, is not unlike that animal in flavour.

As for "poor Wat" himself, the uncanny reputation which in all lands he seems so unjustly to have acquired is here intensified; and among Boers, Kaffirs, and Hottentots he is the object of so superstitious a dread that none will venture to eat him. His inoffensive little body is firmly believed to be tenanted by the spirits of dead-and-gone relatives and friends; and even Phillis, by no means a dainty feeder—to whom a good epidemic of fowl-sickness is a welcome harvest, and the sudden and fatal apoplectic fit of the fattest turkey the occasion of a right royal feast and long-remembered red-letter day,—is indignant and insulted if you offer her what is left of a particularly delicious jugged hare. To have lent a hand in cooking the unholy beast was sacrilege enough, but there her not over-sensitive conscience draws the line. Most uncanny of all the hares is the springhaas. This creature, with disproportionately long hind-legs and kangaroo-like mode of progression, is never seen in the daytime, and can only be shot on moonlight nights.

The best game birds of the Karroo are those of the bustard tribe. Of the great bustard, or paauw, there are two kinds; one, a gigantic bird, sometimes weighing as much as seventy pounds. In hunting the paauw—as in stalking the wily mosquito—your first and special care must be not to let the object of your chase see you looking at him. With well-acted unconsciousness, and eyes carefully turned in any direction but towards the spot where the paauw squats in the grass, you ride round and round him in an ever-lessening circle, until you get within range. Then you jump off, make a run at him, and fire.

A smaller bustard, with beautifully-variegated plumage, is about the size of a large fowl. His Dutch name of knorhaan—which may be translated "scolding cock," or "growling fowl"—is very justly bestowed on him to express his exceeding noisiness, and I do not think that throughout the whole length and breadth of the bird kingdom there exists such another chatterer. What a start he gives you sometimes when, on a brisk ride or drive through the veldt, you approach his hiding-place, and suddenly, before you have had time to see his slender dark neck and head peering out above the low bush, he springs up with a deafening clamour, as of a dozen birds instead of one; and, unless silenced by a shot, he continues his harsh, discordant noise, apparently without once stopping for breath, until his swift wings have borne him far away out of hearing. A whole chorus of blackbirds, suddenly disturbed from revels among ripe fruit, would be nothing in comparison with him.

The quaint, old-fashioned-looking little dikkop, smallest of the bustard tribe, is, in the opinion of epicures, the best of all. In the bustards the position of the white and dark meat is reversed, the flesh being dark on the breast and white on the legs. They possess certain feathers which are invaluable to the makers of flies for fishing.

Of partridges there are two kinds, the red-wing and grey-wing, the latter being found only on the mountains. The beautiful little "Namaqua partridges," which come in flights, are in reality a kind of grouse. It is a pretty sight when, at sundown, these neatest and most delicately-plumaged of little birds collect in large numbers to drink at the dams.

Of some of our queer dishes, such as consomme d'autruche and the mock-turtle afforded by the gigantic tortoises of the veldt, I have already spoken. Now and then, too, when a porcupine was killed, we would follow the example of the Algerian Arabs, and dine sumptuously off its flesh, which was not unlike English pork with extra-good crackling.

A baby porcupine, which was taken alive and unhurt, was for some weeks an amusing addition to the menagerie; and many were our regrets when—just as he was getting tame and friendly—he fell a victim to an unexpected cold night, against which, in his little box out of doors, we had ignorantly left him insufficiently protected. At first his temper, which was decidedly of the kind usually described as "short," gave us much amusement; and, when irritated by our approach, he would stamp his little feet, wheel round impetuously, and come charging at us backwards, with all his quills erect, and an absurd expression of energetic pugnacity depicted, not only on his small, snub-nosed countenance, but throughout the whole of his bristling body.

Unfortunately, "the pig with the sticks on his back," as the Kaffirs call the porcupine, is the worst of gardeners; and provoking indeed is the devastation wrought by his omnivorous appetite among potatoes, carrots, parsley, pumpkins, water-melons, and indeed all other plants which, in our most thankless of kitchen gardens, are grown and irrigated with such infinite toil and difficulty.

The crop which best repays cultivation in that arid soil is Indian corn. This most wholesome and nourishing food is much more suitable for hot climates than oatmeal, as it possesses none of the heating properties of the latter; and, although in one form or another it is a standing dish at nearly every meal in a Karroo house, one never tires of it. The nicest way of preparing it is in the form called "stamped mealies." The ripe yellow grains of the Indian corn are moistened and placed in a large and massive wooden mortar, generally consisting of the stump of a tree hollowed out. (The centre of an old waggon-wheel did duty very effectually as our mealie-stamper.) Then, with a heavy wooden pestle, they are bruised just sufficiently to remove the yellow husks, though not enough to break up the corn itself, as in the case of the American hominy. After a long and gentle boiling the mealies are as tender as young peas, and it is difficult for a stranger to believe that they have not been cooked in milk.

It would be a good thing if those who make it their study to provide cheap and nourishing food for the starving poor of London and other over-populated towns would try stamped mealies. The small cost of the Indian corn and the simple and easy manner of its preparation would enable it to be supplied in large quantities; and the really excellent dish, if it once became known in England, could not fail to be popular. In some parts of South Africa the natives live almost entirely on Indian corn, especially the Zulus, than whom no finer race of men could be found.

If, among all the different competitions now set on foot, there were one for bread-makers of all countries, surely the Dutchwomen of the Karroo would bear away the prize for their delicious whole-meal bread, leavened with sour dough and baked in large earthenware pots. It is beautifully sweet and light; and as Phillis's bread—besides containing almost as plentiful a sprinkling of flies as there are currants in a penny bun—is in every way more often a failure than a success, it is as well for the lady settler promptly on arrival to take a lesson from some neighbouring vrouw, and herself to undertake the bread-making.

While on the subject of whole-meal bread, why is it that in England the nutritious, flinty part of the grain is almost invariably taken out and made into macaroni or used for other purposes, while the bread is made of flour from which all the goodness has been refined away? If whole-meal bread is ordered of the English baker, he throws a handful of bran into this same flour; and the brown loaf looks tempting enough, but both it and the white one are alike tasteless and insipid, and destitute of nutritious qualities. What is really wanted for good bread is just simply the entire contents of the grain, as nature, who after all knows best, has given it to us.

Better than sour dough, yeast, and all the baking-powders in the world is a preparation made by the Kaffir women from a curious and rather rare little plant which grows in the Karroo. This plant is almost all root, the small portion which peeps above the ground consisting only of a few tight clusters of small, shiny knobs, of a dull leaden colour. There is nothing like it for making bread rise; but it is most difficult to get any of it, as the Kaffir women, besides being too lazy to relish the work of preparing it, which is a long and tedious business, make a mystery and a secret of it: no servant will own to understanding it, and somehow one never gets to see the whole process, and is only shown certain stages of it, one of which consists in the hanging up of the substance for a while in a bag exposed to the air, during which time it increases enormously in bulk, in a manner which seems almost miraculous.

Butter being so rare a luxury in the Karroo, a number of different substances have to be pressed into the service during long droughts to supply its place, such as lard, dripping, etc., and, for the table, the fat from the huge tails of sheep somewhat resembling those of Syria, though not, like the latter, kindly provided with little carts on which to drag the cumbersome weight. English jams, of course, like all other imported provisions, are ruinously expensive; and it is a pity that the Natal preserves, plentiful as are both fruit and sugar in that most fertile of lands, are hardly less extravagant in price. But very good home-made jams can be obtained from the Cape gooseberry—a kind of small tomato, enclosed in a loose, crackling bag much too large for it; also from priembesjes (pronounced "primbessies"), a delicious wild fruit which grows on small trees along the lower slopes of the mountains. These trees only bear biennially; and, as if exhausted by the lavish profusion of fruit yielded each alternate season, produce nothing in the intermediate year. The pretty fruit, resembling a small, semi-transparent cherry, is at first completely enclosed in such a tight-fitting case that it looks like a soft, velvety green ball. As the fruit ripens this green covering divides in half, and gradually opens wider and wider, disclosing the vivid scarlet within. Amid the prevailing stiffness and sombreness of Karroo vegetation the pretty, rounded outline of these trees, and their bright, glossy, dark foliage—forming an effective background for the jewel-like fruit as it peeps from the delicate pale-green cases in all different stages of expansion—afford a pleasing contrast.

In search of priembesjes we made many delightful expeditions on horseback to the foot of the mountains; sitting in our saddles close to the trees and picking from our animals' backs, T—— occasionally standing up like a circus-rider to reach the higher boughs. Our horses became quite accustomed to the work, and, moving into the exact spot desired, would stand motionless as long as we chose while we filled our baskets. The fruit is slightly acid and very refreshing; and the preserve, not unlike cherry jam, well repays the trouble of making, which is considerable, the enormous stones being quite out of proportion to the size of the fruit, and very difficult to separate from the pulp. Even these stones, however, possess their good qualities, and contain a delicate little kernel, as nice a nut as you could wish to eat, from which an excellent oil can be pressed. Then, too,—no small recommendation in the eyes of ladies,—they make the most delightful beads, being just soft enough to pierce with a good strong needle, though not so soft as to shrivel up afterwards. They are of all different shades of rich brown, and, when threaded into necklaces, remind one of the old Arab rosaries in Cairo, made from the "Mecca seeds," and rubbed to a brilliant polish by devout Mohammedan thumbs. Jam, beads, oil, and nuts! Surely a tree with such numerous and varied ways of making itself useful to humanity seems quite worthy to have figured in the pages of "The Swiss Family Robinson."