You have pheasants, too, inmates of very stiff and thorny-bushed ravines; they afford good sport, but you must shoot them dead, or you will never find them. There are also several species of the bustard genus, but near Cape Town only the black and grey khoran, so called. On the frontier you have the ordinary bustard, a noble bird and excellent eating, weighing from 9 to 12 lbs., and a species of great bustard, weighing from 20 to 25 lbs. The latter is eatable, but coarse. These you shoot with balls. On the frontier, too, you have buffaloes, elephants, lions, camelopards, ostriches, etc., so well described by Major Harris that it is impossible to add to his faithful account.
Coursing at the Cape is not good. I pursued it much for the sake of hunting four or five couple of spaniels. Hares there never sit in the open as in Europe, but in low stunted bushes—half rabbits. However, this sort of coursing with the spaniels and greyhounds teaches your horse to become a hunter, and by rushing him after hares, he well learns how to tumble or to avoid tumbles.
In the course of our sporting tour, I used to visit the breeding establishments (then called kraals) of all the great breeders, I think, Melk, Kotze, Proctor, Van Reenen, Van der Byl, etc. Melk has six hundred mares, all running out in unenclosed fields. With such an establishment you would expect that he could show you three or four hundred one, two, and three year olds (for they are all sold by this age). He can never show more than seventy or eighty colts of the year, and the rest of the breeders can show no higher proportion. The thoroughbred mares are invariably in miserable condition, the cock-tails fat and sleek. Many of the mares, etc., are afflicted with a disease from an accumulation of sand in their stomachs and intestines.
It was thought far beneath the dignity of a gentleman at the Cape to ride or drive mares, but seeing that the mares were far finer and larger than the horses, and one-fifth of the price, I bought from Proctor two immense mares, as like English hunters as possible, for £45; a thoroughbred mare, 16 hands high, four years old, for my wife (a beautiful creature which very much delighted Lord Dalhousie); and another thoroughbred mare, 15½. They were the four finest horses in Cape Town. One of the carriage mares ruptured her bladder in the carriage, and died in a few hours. The large thoroughbred got a most tremendous fall out hunting, nearly broke my neck, and was chest-foundered ever afterwards. The other two I sold remarkably well. By some accident I never set up mares in my establishment again, but I was never so elegantly horsed.
What with my military duties and those of Council, I led a far from idle life, and there is an elasticity in the atmosphere at the Cape which conduces to a desire to take violent rides. The sun never heats you. I have ridden 140 miles in thirty hours to go to look at a horse or buy one, or to look at a particular line of country. I have been out shooting in the middle of the summer from daylight to dark, the sun like a furnace, the pummel of the saddle like a red-hot poker, your gun-barrel, after a few rapid shots, so heated you almost fear to reload, then come home at night (or slept out in the fields, if you like) and eaten a right good dinner, not in any way heated, and without either headache or cold. An exposure of this sort to the sun of India would probably cause a roaring fever or death.
This is the sort of life which I and my wife lived from 1829 to the end of 1834, enjoying the greatest kindness and hospitality, and living in happiness and sociability with every one. We had lost our dear kind friends, Sir Lowry and Lady Frances Cole, but he was succeeded as Governor and Commander-in-Chief, early in 1834, by a most amiable man, Sir Benjamin D’Urban, the most educated and accomplished soldier I have ever served with.[94]