Here and there, in the midst of its own few acres of cultivated land, is to be seen a farm, and at no unfrequent intervals by the wayside are erections of brick or galvanized iron, which, although often consisting of only a couple of rooms and a store, are nevertheless distinguished by the name of hotels.
Throughout this district the fauna is as varied as the flora, and the species of animals are far more numerous and diversified than in the whole of the next ten degrees further north towards the interior. As I had opportunity in my three subsequent journeys to examine the different animal groups in detail, I shall merely refer here to their names, deferring more minute description for a future page. Ground squirrels and small rodents abound upon the bare levels where there is no grass, associating together in common burrows, which have about twenty holes for ingress and egress, large enough to admit a man’s fist. In places where there is much long grass are found the retreats of moles, jackals, African polecats, jerboas, porcupines, earth-pigs, and short-tailed armadilloes. In the fens there are otters, rats, and a kind of weasel. On the slopes are numerous herds of baboons, black-spotted genets, caracals, jumping mice, a peculiar kind of rabbit, and the rooyebock gazelle; and besides the edentata already mentioned, duykerbock and steinbock gazelles are met with in those districts where the trees are in detached clumps. The tracts of low bushwood, often very extensive, afford shelter to the striped and spotted hyæna, as well as to the strand-wolf (Hyæna brunnea); and there, too, amongst many other rodentia is found a gigantic field-mouse; also two other gazelles, one of them being the lovely little bushbock. The bushes on the slopes and the underwood are the resort of baboons, monkeys, grey wild-cats, foxes, leopards, koodoo-antelopes, bushvarks, blackvarks, buffaloes, and elephants, the elephants being the largest of the three African varieties. A hyrax that is peculiar to the locality, and lives in the trees, ought not to be omitted from the catalogue.
Leopards are more dangerous here than in the uninhabited regions of the interior, where they are less accustomed to the sound of fire-arms, and so desperate do they become when wounded, that it is generally deemed more prudent to destroy them by poison or in traps.
The capture of elephants is forbidden by law; consequently several wild herds, numbering twenty or thirty head, still exist in Cape Colony; whilst in the Transvaal, the Orange Free State, and the Bechuana country the race has been totally annihilated.
Their immunity from pursuit gives them an overweening assurance that is in striking contrast with the behaviour of the animals of their kind in Central and Northern South Africa. There a shot, even if two or three miles away, is enough to put a herd to speedy flight, and they seldom pause, until they have placed the best part of twenty miles between themselves and the cause of their alarm; and although within the last twenty years 7500 elephants have been killed by Europeans, it is the very rarest occurrence for one of them to make an unprovoked attack upon a human being. Here, on the contrary, between Port Elizabeth and Grahamstown, it is necessary to be on one’s guard against meeting one of the brutes. Just before I returned to Port Elizabeth on my homeward journey, a sad accident had happened in the underwood by the Zondags River, which flows partially through the forest. A black servant had been sent by his master to look for some cattle that had strayed; as the man did not return, a search was made for him, but nothing was found except his mangled corpse. From the marks all around, it was quite evident that a herd of passing elephants had scented him out, and diverging from their path, had trampled the poor fellow to death. It should be mentioned, that although ordinarily living under protection, these ponderous creatures may be slain by consent of the Government.
ELEPHANTS ON THE ZONDAGS RIVER.
Page 28.
To enumerate all the varieties of birds to be seen hereabouts would be impossible; an ornithologist might consume months before he could exhaust the material for his collection; I will only say that a sportsman may, day after day, easily fill more than his own bag with different kinds of bustards, guinea-fowl, partridges, sand-grouse, snipes and plovers, wild ducks and wild geese, divers and other water-fowl. The wonderful and beautiful productions of the vegetable kingdom that excite the admiration of the stranger as he makes his excursions in this district, whether in pursuit of pleasure or of science, derive a double charm from the numerous graceful birds and sparkling insects that hover and flit about them. Here are long-tailed Nectariniæ, or sun-birds, now darting for food into the cup-shaped blossoms of the iris, and now alighting upon the crimson flower-spike of the aloe; and there, though not the faintest breath of air is stirring, the branches of a little shrub are all in agitation; amidst the gleaming dark-green foliage, a flock of tiny green and yellow songsters, not unlike our golden-crested wren, are all feasting busily upon the insects that lie hidden beneath the leaves.
On the tops of the waggon-trees, hawks and shrikes, beautiful in plumage, keep their sharp look-out, each bird presiding over its own domain; and no sooner does a mouse, a blindworm, or a beetle expose itself to view, than the bird pounces down upon its prey; its movement so sudden, that the bough on which it sat rebounds again as though rejoicing in its freedom from its burden.