March 10.
You will think this letter is nothing but a jumble of grumbles if, after complaining of the roads, I complain of my hens; but, really, if the case were fairly stated, I am quite sure that Mr. Tetmegeier or any of the great authorities on poultry-keeping would consider I had some ground for bemoaning myself. In the first place, as I think I have mentioned before, there is a sudden and mysterious disease among poultry which breaks out like an epidemic, and is vaguely called “fowl-sickness.” That possibility alone is an anxiety to one, and naturally makes the poultry-fancier desirous of rearing as many chickens as possible, so as to leave a margin for disaster. In spite of all my incessant care and trouble, and a vast expenditure of mealies, to say nothing of crusts and scraps, I only manage to rear about twenty-five per cent. of my chickens. Even this is accomplished in the face of such unparalleled stupidity on the part of my hens that I wonder any chickens survive at all. Nothing will induce the hens to avail themselves of any sort of shelter for their broods. They just squat down in the middle of a path or anywhere, and go to sleep there. I hear sleepy “squawks” in the middle of the night, and find next morning that a cat or owl or snake has been supping off half my baby-chickens. Besides this sort of nocturnal fatalism, they perpetrate wholesale infanticide during the day by dragging the poor little wretches about among weeds and grass five feet high, all wet and full of thorns and burs. But it is perhaps in the hen-house that the worst and most idiotic part of their nature shows itself. Some few weeks ago I took three hens who were worrying us all to death by clucking entreaties to be given eggs to sit upon, and established them in three empty boxes, with seven or eight eggs under each. What do you think these hens have done? They have contrived, in the first place, to push and roll all the eggs into one nest. Then they appear to have invited every laying hen in the place into that box, for I counted forty-eight eggs in it last week. Upon these one hen sits, in the very centre. Of course, there are many eggs outside her wings, although she habitually keeps every feather fluffed out to the utmost; which must in itself be a fatigue. Around her, standing, but still sitting vigorously, were three other hens covering, or attempting to cover, this enormous nestful of eggs. Every now and then they appear to give a party, for I find several eggs kicked out into the middle of the hen-house, and strange fowls feeding on them amid immense cackling. Nothing ever seems to result from this pyramid of feathers. It (the pyramid) has been there just five weeks now, and at distant intervals a couple of chickens have appeared which none of the hens will acknowledge. Sitting appears to be their one idea. They look upon chickens as an interruption to their more serious duties, and utterly disregard them. It is quite heartbreaking to see these unhappy chickens seeking for a mother, and meeting with nothing but pecks and squalls, which plainly express, “Go along, do!” One hen I have left, as advised, to her own devices, and she has shown her instinct by laying ten eggs on a rafter over the stable, upon which she can barely balance herself and them. Upon these eggs she is now sitting with great diligence, but as each chicken is hatched there is no possible fate for it but to tumble off the rafter and be killed. There is no ladder or any means of ascent, or of descent except a drop of a dozen feet. Another hen has turned a pigeon off her nest, and insisted on sitting upon the two eggs herself. Great was her dismay, however, when she found that her babies required to be fed every five minutes, and that no amount of pecking could induce them to come out for a walk the day they were hatched. She deserted them, of course, and the poor little pigeons died of neglect. Now, do you not think Kafir hens are a handful for a poor woman, who has quantities of other things to do, to have to manage?
Part of my regular occupation at this time of year, when nearly every blade of grass carries a tick at its extreme tip, is to extract these pertinacious little beasties from the children’s legs and arms. I can understand how it is that G—— is constantly coming to me saying, “A needle, mumsy, if you please: here is such a big tick!” because he is always in the grass helping Charlie to stuff what he has cut for the horses into a sack or assisting some one else to burn a large patch of rank vegetation, and dislodging snakes, centipedes and all sorts of venomous things in the process,—I can understand, I say, how this mischievous little imp, who is always in the front of whatever is going on, should gather unto himself ticks, mosquitoes, and even “fillies;” but I cannot comprehend why the baby, who, from lack of physical possibilities, leads a comparatively harmless and innocent existence, should also attract ticks to his fat arms and legs. I thought perhaps they might come from a certain puppy which gets a good deal of hugging up, but I am assured that a tick never leaves an animal. They will come off the grass upon any live thing passing, but they never move once they have taken hold of flesh with their cruel pincers. It is quite a dreadful thing to see the oxen “out-spanned” when they come down to the “spruit” to drink. Their dewlaps, and indeed their whole bodies, seem a mass of these horrible, swollen, bloated insects, as big as a large pea already, but sucking away with all their might, and resisting all efforts the unhappy animals can make with tail or head to get rid of them. Whenever I see the baby restless and fidgety, I undress him, and I am pretty sure to find a tick or two lazily moving about looking for a comfortable place to settle. G—— gave me quite a fright the other day. He was nicely dressed, for a wonder, to go for a drive with me in the carriage, and was standing before my looking-glass attempting to brush his hair. Suddenly I saw a stream of blood pouring down his neck, and on examination I found that he must have dislodged the great bloated tick lying on his collar, and which had settled on a vein just above his ear. The creature had made quite a wound as it was being torn away by the brush, and the blood was pouring freely from it, and would not be staunched. No cold water or plaster or anything would stop it, and the end was that poor little G—— had to give up his drive and remain at home with wet cloths on his head. He was rather proud of it, all the same, considering it quite an adventure, especially as he declared it did not hurt at all. Both the children keep very well here, although they do not look so rosy as they used to in England; but I am assured that the apple-cheeks will come back in the winter. They have enormous appetites, and certainly enjoy the free, unconventional life amazingly; only Baby will not take to a Kafir nurse-boy. He condescends to smile when Charlie or any of the servants (for they all pet him a great deal) executes a war-dance for his amusement or sings him a song, but he does not like being carried about in their arms. I have now got a Kafir nurse-girl, a Christian. She is a fat, good-tempered and very docile girl of about fifteen, who looks at least twenty-five years old. Baby only goes to her to pluck off the gay ’kerchief she wears on her head. When that is removed he shrieks to get away from her.
It is so absurd to see an English child falling into colonial ways. G—— talks to all the animals in Kafir, for they evidently don’t understand English. If one wants to get rid of a dog, it is of no use saying “Get out!” ever so crossly; but when G—— yells “Foot-sack!” (this is pure phonetic spelling, out of my own head) the cur retreats precipitately. So to a horse: you must tell him to go on in Kafir, and he will not stop for any sound except a long low whistle. G—— even plays at games of the country. Sometimes I come upon the shady side of the verandah, taken up with chairs arranged in pairs along all its length and a sort of tent of rugs and shawls at one end, which is the wagon. “I am playing at trekking, mumsy dear: would you like to wait and see me out-span? There is a nice place with water for the bullocks, and wood for my fire. Look at the brake of my wagon; and here’s such a jolly real bullock-whip Charlie made me out of a bamboo and strips of bullock-hide.” G—— can’t believe he ever played at railways or horses or civilized games, and it is very certain that the baby will trek and out-span so soon as he can toddle.
We grown-up people catch violent colds here; and it is no wonder, considering the changes of weather, far beyond what even you, with your fickle climate, have to bear. Twenty-four hours ago it was so cold that I was glad of my sealskin jacket at six o’clock in the evening, and it was really bitterly cold at night. The next morning there was a hot wind, and it has been like living at the mouth of a furnace ever since. What wonder is it that I hear of bronchitis or croup in almost every house, and that we have all got bad colds in our throats and chests? I heard the climate defined the other day as one in which sick people get well, and well people get sick, and I begin to think it is rather a true way of looking at it. People are always complaining, and the doctors (of whom there are a great many in proportion to the population) seem always very busy. Everybody says, “Wait till the winter,” but I have been here four months now, three of which have certainly been the most trying and disagreeable, as to climate and weather, I have ever experienced; nor have I ever felt more generally unhinged and unwell in my life. This seems a hard thing to say of a climate with so good a reputation as this, but I am obliged to write of things as I find them. I used to hear the climate immensely praised in England, but I don’t hear much said in its favor here. The most encouraging remark one meets with is, “Oh, you’ll get used to it.”