The elephant (Loxodonta africana): male twelve feet high, droops towards the tail; extreme length eighteen feet; colour blackish-brown; tail short, tufted with coarse hair at the end; ears very large, and front of head round; tusks large, from three to seven feet in length, weighing nearly a hundred pounds: female smaller, with tusks, except solitary specimens. Gregarious; found in large troops in the forests; wary, fierce, and vindictive.
Besides the animals that I have described, there were baboons, monkeys, rock-rabbits (the hyrax), a species of hare, porcupines, the ratel, many small vermin, such as the ichneumon, etc., in great numbers. All these animals were to be found in the Natal district in numbers, whilst across the Drookensburg Mountains were camelopards, rhinoceros, zebras, koodoo, wildebeest, gnoos, sassybys, water-buck, roan-antelope, blesbok, springbok, pallahs, ostriches, and many other magnificent animals, in countless herds.
A curious creature inhabits the African forest,—many specimens were found by me in the Berea, near Natal; it is called the Manis. It looks like a large and scaly lizard, being covered with hard scales, or plates, like thick short leaves; when lying on the ground motionless, it resembles a vegetable. Its body is long; tail twice the length of body; total length, about four feet; it is toothless.
The Cape horses have been universally praised by travellers; they are particularly hardy, game, and docile. The climate in many parts of the colony is well suited for breeding; and although inland but little attention is paid to this important matter, still it is a rare occurrence to find an animal, however ugly or misshapen, without its redeeming quality. At Cape Town and the immediate neighbourhood, the horses generally are like those of England, with a slight trace of the Arab in their head and hind-quarters; the breed, in fact, is a compound of the English thoroughbred and the Arab. Several well-known English horses have found their way to the Cape, having been purchased for exportation when they were stale or broken down; Fancy Boy, Battledore, Rococo, Gorhambury, Evenus, and many more, having acted as fountains for supplying a stream of pure blood through the equine veins of Africa. Nearly a hundred horses of tolerable English fame have been landed at the Cape within the last twenty years.
In many parts of the colony races are held, and the stakes are sufficient to repay the winners for their expenses in training and breeding. In Cape Town horses of good appearance fetch from twenty-five to sixty guineas, and very much larger prices are frequently given. The stallion is all-in-all with Cape breeders, the mare being considered as quite a secondary item. The consequence is, that from the frequent disproportion between the dam and sire, awkward-looking animals are common, more especially inland, where the science of breeding is less understood: a horse is frequently seen with fore-quarters equal to fifteen hands, and hind-quarters only large enough for a pony. In Africa many animals have a tendency to largeness about the fore-quarters; the elephant, wildebeest, and hartebeest appearing unnaturally heavy in front, and as though they required but a push from behind to send them on their noses. Whether the climate has anything to do with this peculiar form I know not, but the horses are seldom too large in their hind-quarters, although the Hottentots and the Cape sheep are in this particular absolutely ponderous.
The Hantam and Swellendam districts are celebrated for their breed of horses, and these supply great part of the colony. The qualities most esteemed amongst the Cape breeders are,—small head, small ears, large nostril, small muzzle, broad chest, large bone in the leg, short in the cannon and pastern, toes rather turned in than out; well ribbed home (many Dutchmen would not buy a horse that allowed more than four fingers to be placed between the last rib and the hip-bone); broad behind, with the tail set on very high (this last is a spécialité); cow-hocks are detested. Several small peculiarities are esteemed at the Cape that are not even observed in England; for instance, a Dutchman once told me that he knew a pony of mine must be enduring, from the small size of the corns on the inside of the hind-legs; he assured me that, when this was the case, a horse rarely tired, while, when the reverse, he generally shut up with only half a journey. I must own that I found this man’s theory correct, as far as my experience carried me.
The Cape shooting-ponies are most extraordinary animals. In a country of this description, where every small journey, or even call, is made on horseback, the pony is more convenient than the horse; he is more easily mounted, is cheaper both to keep and buy, and is generally more manageable and teachable. Beauty forms no necessary item with a shooting-pony; he is often ugly, misshapen, big-headed, and small in girth; but upon examining him closely, the large bone of the leg, game head, and large nostril, with several other recommendations, cancel the imperfection of want of beauty. His action also is peculiar; he rarely walks, his mode of progression being a sort of tripple, at which he travels about six or seven miles an hour: trotting is not admired by the Boers. When the pony gallops, he shows good action, and his activity in scrambling down the hills that are covered with loose stones, rocks, and holes, is something marvellous; he is seldom shod, his hoofs being as hard and tough as iron. I usually shod the fore hoofs, as the roads were sometimes hard in or near the towns; but inland, where the country was nearly all grass, even this was unnecessary. The hardiness of these ponies was extraordinary; they frequently had but little to eat, and less to drink, were ridden long journeys, and then, while covered with sweat, turned out on a plain to pick up a very scanty meal. Their principal forage was fresh air and a roll in the sand; and upon these they thrived very well, while grooming was considered quite an unnecessary labour, and a proceeding that did more harm than good.
When a Boer takes a long journey, he rides one pony and leads two others, changing his saddle from back to back, as each animal has done its share. Biding for two hours, and off-saddling for half an hour, is the usual arrangement; six miles an hour being the general pace. When a traveller halts in Africa, which he does in a well-chosen spot, near water and shade if possible, he takes off the saddle and bridle, and knee-halters his horse; this last affair is nothing more than fastening the animal’s head to its leg just above the knee; the leg is lifted up, and the halter passed round, and formed into a clove hitch: thus held, the animal is unable to move away quickly, and can be caught when required: the halter does not slip, or gall the leg. As soon as the pony finds himself at this partial liberty, he searches for a dry, sandy place, scrapes the ground a little, and then enjoys his roll; he gets up covered with dust and dirt, takes a drink, and loses no time, but at once picks up as much grass as the place affords. When the traveller is again ready, the animal is up-saddled, and the journey continued. Few of the colonial settlers have stables; the pony, on completing the journey, is turned out to graze until evening, when it is driven into an inclosure fenced with palings or brushwood, and thus left uncovered and uncombed. In the morning, it is turned out for the day. The better-kept horses have oats, barley, and Indian corn; oats being expensive in many parts of South Africa, barley is obliged to supply its place, and the horses consequently suffer in condition; the Indian corn is fattening, but is very inferior to oats; it is also dangerous by blowing out horses; and if they are allowed to drink much after eating it, they sometimes die from the swelling of the corn inside them, or the gas there generated.
About the coast of Natal, horses did not thrive well; the climate was rather relaxing, and “the sickness,” as it is called, sometimes attacked them. The enormous number of ticks that transferred their adhesive properties from the grass to the hides of the horses, and then sucked the blood, was a species of outlay that few of the hard-worked quadrupeds could afford. If a horse were turned out to graze in the morning, he would before evening be covered with hundreds of ticks, each of which, by burying itself under the horse’s skin and sucking the blood, becomes distended and increased from the size and appearance of a common bug to that of a broad-bean. A Kaffir would be nearly an hour in clearing a horse from these animals, and after all overlook scores, whose distended hides would appear in the morning. The sickness that I refer to was very fatal: a horse would one day appear well, but perhaps a little heavy in hand; the next day he would be down on his side, and dead before the evening. I attended the post-mortem of one or two animals that died in this way, but could discover nothing decidedly unhealthy: this, however, was most probably owing to my want of experience in the veterinary art. The Boers are frequently unmerciful to their horses, and I seldom rode a horse that had been very long in the possession of a Boer, but I found its mouth like iron and its temper none of the sweetest. The Dutchmen frequently train their shooting-horses to stand fire by galloping them for two or three miles and then firing twenty or thirty shots from their backs. If these horses are at all frisky under the discharge, the merciless riders, plying whip and spur, take another gallop, and repeat the performance until they conquer the restlessness of their steeds. This is certainly not a proceeding likely to improve the temper of any animal, particularly if well bred or having any fire in its composition; but rough-and-ready is the great thing in Africa.
When well-trained, the Cape shooting-pony is worth his weight in gold; he is treated more like a dog than a horse, knows when he is spoken to, and obeys orders, fears nothing, and seems to delight in sport. I possessed a pony that was so easily managed and steady, that I frequently shot snipe, partridges, and always buck, from off his back. He was my daily companion for two years, and rarely played me a trick. He had a queer temper; but, knowing this, I made due allowance, and we always managed things well. If I spurred him, or pulled the rein, when he approached a hill, he would stop and refuse to advance; but a word or two in Dutch, in place of the assault, would make matters progress satisfactorily. I heard that his career after I left was unfortunate;—he passed through one or two hands who could not have understood him, and was finally killed by a lion in the interior. I can easily imagine that such would have been his fate, should he be in the vicinity of a hungry lion, as he never showed fear of elephants or any other animal, and was not alarmed by the smell of a fresh lion’s skin past which I rode one day.