CHAPTER XI.
HOW WE FARED.
Angora goats — Difficulty of keeping meat — The plague of flies — Rations — Our store — Barter — Fowls — Chasing a dinner — Fowls difficult to rear — Secretary birds as guardians of the poultry-yard — Jacob in the Karroo — He comes down in the world — He dies — Antelopes — A springbok hunt — The Queen's birthday in the Karroo — Colonial dances — Our klipspringer — Superstition about hares — Game birds — Paauw — Knorhaan — Namaqua partridges — Porcupines — A short-lived pet — Indian corn — Stamped mealies — Whole-meal bread — Plant used for making bread rise — Substitutes for butter — Priembesjes — A useful tree — Wild honey — The honey bird — Enemies of bees — Moth in bees' nests — Good coffee — Sour milk.
"How did you live?" is a question we have very often been asked by friends, who, evidently thinking that our fare on that far-away South African farm must necessarily have been of the roughest, and that from a gastronomic point of view we were deeply to be pitied, have been quite surprised to hear that on the whole we lived very well.
To be sure there were drawbacks. In the first place, however simply you may live in the Cape Colony, you cannot possibly live cheaply; for import duties are ruinously heavy, and almost everything, with the exception of meat, has to be imported. Wheat, for instance, has to be brought from Australia; the poor, dry South African colony being quite unable to produce anything like a sufficient supply for its needs. Then, too, green vegetables are very far from being an everyday item in the menu; and as for fresh fish, it is a still rarer luxury, indeed throughout all the long, hot summer it is absolutely unobtainable on the farms, and one almost forgets what it is like. Eggs and butter, too, have their long periods, first of excessive and increasing scarcity, and then of entire absence from kitchen and table.
But in the colonies people soon learn to accommodate themselves to circumstances, and contentedly to do without many of the things which in England seemed such necessary adjuncts to daily life. They even become accustomed to a very sad lack of variety in the matter of meat. From one year's end to another merino mutton and Angora goat are almost unchangingly the order of the day; the bill of fare being varied by beef only on those rare occasions, during the very coldest weather, when one of the farmers—having ascertained beforehand that a sufficient number of neighbours are willing to share the meat—is enterprising enough to slaughter an ox. But the difficulties of keeping meat are such that sheep and goats are generally found to be quite large enough; indeed, in the hot weather, they are very much too large, and one is continually wishing that a diminutive race of mutton-producing quadrupeds—say of the size of Skye terriers—were in existence for the benefit of housekeepers in sultry climates. Fortunately you do not get so tired of perpetual mutton as might be expected, and it does not pall on the taste as beef or fowl would do under the same circumstances. As we had only a few sheep, but possessed a flock of several hundred Angoras, our standing dish was, of course, goat. Let not the traveller pity us who on his journeyings—in Southern Europe for instance—has had the misfortune to partake of the tough, stringy, and strongly-flavoured goat's flesh too often iniquitously substituted for mutton by unprincipled hotel-keepers. As different as black from white is that unholy viand from our delicious Angora meat; equal, if not superior, to the best mutton.
The goats are beautiful creatures, with a profusion of long, wavy hair, which is as soft and glossy as the finest silk, and which, in the thoroughbred animals, is of the purest white, and nearly touches the ground. In the evening it is a pretty sight to watch the goats coming down from the mountains, on whose steep and rocky sides they have browsed all day; and where, as they descend, they form a long line of snowy white against the red and green background of the aloes and spekboom. It is pleasant, too, to go out to the kraals when the little kids, which all arrive at about the same time, are only a few days old. These goats are prolific creatures, many of them having two, or even three young ones at once. The crowded enclosure is all alive with the merry, noisy little fellows, jumping and scampering about in all directions; and within a few days the number of the flock seems to have almost doubled.
Angora goats are now more profitable than ostriches; although the hair, like feathers, has sadly decreased in value, the price having fallen from 4s. 6d. to 9d. per lb. It seems strange that Angora hair should remain at such a low price; for a costly plush is now made from it, besides very beautiful rugs, many of them perfect imitations of leopard, tiger, and seal-skin—the latter hardly less expensive than real seal.
The morning on which a goat or sheep is killed—especially during very hot weather—ushers in a time of care and anxiety for the frugal housewife. From the moment when the animal expires under the black herd's hands, until the last joint has been brought to table, that meat is an incubus which sits heavy on her soul all day, and occasionally even haunts her dreams at night. She has to wage persistent war against adverse agencies, always in readiness to work its destruction, and, with all her vigilance, too often successfully robbing her of a good portion of it.
First and foremost of all enemies are the flies in the field. As soon as the dead goat or sheep is hung up out of doors, in as cool and shady a place as can be found—though this is by no means saying much—it must instantly be enclosed in a capacious, tightly-tied and carefully-mended bag of mosquito-net, large enough to cover the whole animal. For all around, buzzing excitedly, and eagerly looking out for an opening, however small, through which to squeeze in and do their deadly work, are crowds of big, noisy, determined blue-bottles—though, by the way, if I may be allowed so Irish an expression, in the Karroo these abominations are all green, and—gorgeous as Brazilian beetles—flash like great emeralds in the sunshine.