A German merchant, Hermann Michaelis, to whom I first betook myself, directed me to Herr Adler, the Austrian Consul, and through the kind exertions of this gentleman in my behalf, Port Elizabeth proved to me a most enjoyable place of residence. He introduced me to the leading gentry of the town, and in a very short time I had the gratification of having several patients placed under my care. I had much leisure, which I spent in making excursions around the neighbourhood, but I had hardly been in Port Elizabeth a fortnight when I received an offer from one of the resident merchants, inviting me to settle down as a physician, with an income of about 600l. a year. The proposal was very flattering, and very enticing; it opened the way to set me free from all pecuniary difficulties, but for reasons which will hereafter be alleged, I was unable to accept it.
I generally made my excursions in the morning, as soon as I had paid my medical visits, returning late in the afternoon. Sometimes I went along the shore to the south, by a long tongue of land partially clothed with dense tropical brushwood, and partially composed of wide tracts of sand, on the extremity of which, seven miles from the town, stands a lighthouse. Sometimes I chose the northern shore, and walked as far as the mouth of the Zwartkop River. Sometimes, again, I spent the day in exploring the valley of the Baker River, which I invariably found full of interest. Furnished with plenty of appliances for collecting, I always found it a delight to get away from the hotel, and escaping from the warehouses, to gain the bridge over the river; but it generally took the best part of half an hour before I could make my way through the bustle of the wool depôt, which monopolizes the 250 yards of sand between the buildings and the sea.
Towards the south, as far as the lighthouse, the coast is one continuous ledge of rock, sloping in a terrace down to the water, and incrusted in places with the work of various marine animals, especially coral polypes. Sandy tracts of greater or less extent are found along the shore itself, but the sand does not extend far out to sea in the way that it does on the north of the town, towards the mouth of the Zwartkop.
All the curiosities that I could fish up at low tide from the coral grottoes, and all the remarkable scraps of coral and sea-weed that were cast up by the south-easterly storms, I carried home most carefully; and after my return from the interior, I found opportunity to continue my collections over a still larger area, and met with a still larger success.
Accompanied by four or five hired negroes, and by my little black waiting-maid Bella, I worked for hours together on the shore, and brought back rare and precious booty to the town.
The capture of the nautilus afforded us great amusement. We used to poke about the pools in the rocks with an iron-wire hook, and if the cephalopod happened to be there it would relinquish its hold upon the rock to which it had been clinging, and make a wild clutch upon the hook, thus enabling us to drag it out; of course, it would instantly fall off again; if it chanced to tumble upon a dry place, it would contract its tentacles and straightway make off to the sea; but if it lighted on the loose shingle we were generally able, by the help of some good-sized stones, to pick it up and make it a prisoner. The bodies of the largest of these mollusks are about five inches in length, but their expanded tentacles often reach to a measure of two feet. They are much sought after and relished by the Malays, who call them cat-fish.
Occasionally we saw young men and women with hammers collecting oysters, cockles, and limpets, to be sold in the town; and every here and there were groups of white boys with little bags, not unlike butterfly-nets, catching a sort of prawns, which some of the residents esteem a great delicacy. Diver-birds and gulls abounded near the shallows, the former rising so sluggishly upon the wing, that several of them allowed themselves to be captured by my dog Spot.
The coast, as I have already mentioned, here forms a wide tongue of land, half of which is a bare bank, whilst, with the exception of the extreme point, the other part, near the town and towards the lighthouse, is clothed with luxuriant vegetation. At least a thousand different varieties of plants are to be found in the district, and this is all the more surprising because they have their roots in soil which is mere sand. Fig-marigolds of various kinds are especially prominent; here and there citron-coloured trusses of bloom, as large as the palm of one’s hand, stand out in gleaming contrast to the dark finger-like, triangular leaves; a few steps further, and at the foot of a thick shrubbery, appear a second and a third variety, the one with orange-tinted blossoms, the other with red; and while we are stopping to admire these, just a little to the right, below a thicket of rushes, our eye is caught by yet another sort, dark-leaved and with flowers of bright crimson. Another moment, and before we have decided which to gather first, something slippery beneath our feet makes us look down, and we become aware that even another variety, this time having blossoms of pure white, is lurking almost hidden in the grass. In the pursuit of this diversified and attractive flora, the multiplicity of dwarf shrubs, of rushes, and of euphorbias, stands only too good a chance of being completely overlooked.
EUPHORBIA TREES.