One of our plants always reminded me of those French sweets, threaded on a stiff straw, which often form a part of the contents of a bon-bon box. The thick, succulent leaves, shaded green and red, with a frosted, sparkling surface which increases the resemblance to the candied sweets, and all as exactly alike in shape and size as if made in one mould, are threaded like beads at equal distances along the stem, which passes through a little round hole in the very centre of each. They can all be taken off and threaded on again just as they were before.
Close to the ground, and growing from a little round root apparently belonging to the bulbous tribe, you sometimes—though only rarely—see a tiny mass of soft, curling fibres, delicate and unsubstantial-looking as a little green cloud. Even the foliage of asparagus would look coarse and heavy if placed beside this really ethereal little plant, which yet is durable, for I have now with me a specimen which, though gathered five years ago, is still quite unchanged.
The wild tobacco is a common—indeed too common—plant in the Karroo; it has clusters of long, narrow, trumpet-shaped flowers, of a light yellow, its leaves are small, and it resembles the cultivated tobacco neither in appearance nor in usefulness. Indeed it is one of our worst enemies, being poisonous to ostriches, which of course—true to their character—lose no opportunity of eating it. We made deadly war upon it, and whenever during our rides about the farm we came upon a clump of its blue-green bushes, we would make up a little bonfire at the foot of each, and burn it down to the ground. But it is tenacious of life, and its roots go down deep, so its career of evil was only cut short for a time. Besides which, our efforts to keep it under were of little avail while our neighbours, "letting things slide," in true colonial fashion, allowed the plants to run wild on their own land; from whence the seeds were always liable to be washed down to us during "a big rain," when the deep sluits which everywhere intersect the country become, in a few hours, raging torrents, dashing along at express speed.
Strangely enough, when T——, some years ago, was travelling in Australia, to which country he had brought some ostriches from the Cape, he found that wild tobacco grew nowhere throughout the length and breadth of the land, excepting just in the very region in which the birds had been established. During that trip he also found that the "salt-bush" of Australia, which is there considered the best kind of food for sheep, is almost identical with the brack-bosch of the Cape Colony, the only difference being that it grows higher. We have also seen the same bush growing in Algeria, and near Marseilles.
On the lower slopes of some of our mountains grow tall euphorbias, shooting up straight and stiff as if made of metal, and branching out in the exact form of the Jewish candlestick sculptured on the arch of Titus in Rome. Some of these euphorbias attain the height of forty feet—quite important dimensions in that comparatively treeless land. They impart an air of melancholy and desolation to the landscape; and look particularly weird and uncanny when, on a homeward ride, you pass through a grove of them at dusk.
One more queer plant in conclusion of these slight and very unscientific reminiscences of our flora, which I trust may never meet the eye of any botanist. The kerzbosch, or candle-bush, a stunted, thorny plant, if lighted at one end when in the green state, will burn steadily just like a wax candle, and is used as a torch for burning off the thorns of prickly pear, etc.
CHAPTER IV.
OUR LITTLE HOME.
Building operations — A plucking — Ugliness of Cape houses — Our rooms — Fountain in sitting-room a failure — Drowned pets — Decoration of rooms — Colonist must be Jack-of-all-trades — Cape waggons — Shooting expeditions — Strange tale told by Boer.
On our first arrival in the Karroo we were unable to take up our abode at once on our own farm; the best of the three small Dutch houses on it being little better than a hut, and consisting but of two small and badly-built rooms; with mud floors and smoke-blackened reed ceilings, as far removed from the horizontal as the roughly-plastered walls, which bulged and retreated in all unexpected directions, were from the perpendicular—the whole architecture, if so pretentious a term may be used, being entirely innocent of any approach to a straight line or correct angle. We at once commenced building operations; in the meanwhile renting a little house which happened to be vacant on the next farm, about an hour's rough, but pretty ride from our own. Now came a busy time for T——, and for his manager—the latter already installed, uncomfortably enough, in the old Dutch house—for besides the brick-making and building, and the deepening of the well near the house, there was, as must always be the case on starting a new farm, much to be done, and everything required to be done at once. T—— spent most of his time at "Swaylands," as we named our farm; and very enjoyable for me were the days when I could spare a few hours from household duties to ride over with him, to watch the progress of the new rooms, or to be initiated into some of the mysteries of ostrich-farming, all delightfully new and strange to me.